Dr Dani: [00:00:00] Hey Peter. 

Designer Peter: Hello, Dani. 

Dr Dani: How are you? 

Designer Peter: I'm really well, thank you. How are you? 

Dr Dani: I am good. What are we talking about today? 

Today, bit of a first for the podcast, Dani. We've got a question from a friend of the podcast and a longtime listener. Nice. Yeah, this is exciting. It's, isn't it?

We need to think of a way for more people to ask us questions, give us ideas for, for conversations. This question is from, friend of the podcast and longtime listener Ian Scott. We can find Ian on LinkedIn. Ian's question, what's your view on human-centered systems thinking?

 We'll use that as a starting point and could go anywhere in the next, 45 minutes.

But what's our view on human-centered systems thinking? And as usual, should we start with some definitions? I think it'd be helpful, yeah.   

Okay, so let's start with defining what human-centered design is.  

In a very [00:01:00] simplistic way, human-centered design is an approach to problem solving that places the needs, wants, and pain points of humans.

At the center of the problem solving process.  

It requires, empathizing to deeply understand it requires working iteration, it requires, experimenting and co-designing solutions with people that are going to be using them.  

When I talk about this, I get a lot of look sometimes isn't that just problem solving?

And if you think that way, that is awesome. But there are lots of people that for, that's just not traditionally when we were taught to solve problems. We weren't taught to bring the people into it, we were taught to isolate the root cause. 

And then eliminate the root cause. And that's how, you come to it to a solution.

And then you figure out, then you go out and teach people how to use the solution. [00:02:00] 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: So problem solving has historically and traditionally happened, in an isolated way. So you learn about the problem and then the team goes away in some back room, comes up with a solution and goes, TA, here's how you use this.

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: Whereas what human-centered design says is, okay, let's sit with you to really understand what the problem is, what the pain points are. Let's work together to ideate some potential ways. Because the other thing that human-centered design says is that lots of times the people that are experiencing the problem have lots of ideas about how to fix it.

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: We work side by side with them. And we take a very experimenting approach. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. Like it, 

Dr Dani: and I will say, because the other backlash that human centered design gets it sounds like it's a longer process to problem solving.

It's much easier to go, okay, this is [00:03:00] the problem, let's just skirt off and do it. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: The problem with that is that the problem doesn't get solved until people use the solution. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. 

Dr Dani: So you have problem, you have solution. The problem doesn't go away until the solution is adopted. Yeah. And if the people that need to adopt that solution have not been part of creating it, 

The buy-in and the adoption of that solution is going to be much harder, which means the problem doesn't really go away, but you've spent a lot of time, money, and effort building something. Yeah. So you're either gonna spend the time on the front end or you're gonna spend the time on the back end.

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. . Totally agree. That's de that's definitely, a point of, , tension or resistance when, we're talking to people in organizations, talking to organizations and offering them I guess an alternative approach to the one they've been taking. And often I.

The kind of the immediate, or one of the immediate objections, the backlash is, this is, we don't have [00:04:00] time for that. But I think you, and I know from our experience and I'm sure some of our listeners do as well that the time to, like you say, actually solving the problem is either the same or less than it would be by taking let's call it, I dunno, traditional, the right term, but taking a, an approach where we're jumping to we're not doing a lot of the things you've just described, so we're jumping to one solution, which we have a hunch or belief that it's the right thing to do, and we deliver it and oh, guess what?

It's not taking into account human behavior and therefore people aren't gonna use it and they stick to the old way et cetera, et cetera. And then you have to do more on doing work or redesign work. So yeah, it's cheaper and quicker, generally speaking, to take a human-centered approach, even though it might not seem like that.

Another, there's a couple of questions bubbling up from email. Let's talk about these in terms of, before we get into systems thinking one, of them is what were the Design Thinker podcast, Dani? So human centered design and design thinking. How do they relate to each [00:05:00] other? What's your thoughts on that?

Dr Dani: Just to clarify that before we move on. 

Human-centered design, we, you can think about it as a broader umbrella. 

Dr Dani: Whereas design thinking is a specific process or a specific way of doing yeah. Human-centered design. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. That's my that, that's almost identical to my thoughts on those two things are design thinking is a way of practicing human-centered design.

And there's other ways of practicing human-centered design. But 

Dr Dani: so if use an analogy, when we say yoga  

But within that, you've got different types of yoga. You've got power yoga, you've got Bikram yoga. Yeah. You've got hatha 

hatha. You've got all these different types of yoga.

So that's design thinking is a way, the same way that hatha is a way to practice yoga. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. And we've not done this before. There's a couple of shoutouts in this podcast. I'm gonna shout out to Barga 'cause that's a type of bro, a type of yoga that I practice every week.

Dr Dani: I, hang on it 

Designer Peter: barga. 

Dr Dani: I feel like you need to explain what that is. I 

Designer Peter: should do, shouldn't I? 

Dr Dani: So 

Designer Peter: what it's not [00:06:00] is in any way related to Silicon Valley Tech Bros, or I feel like bro is the latest word to be hijacked by an undesirable group in society. Bro is short for brother and as a man, all my brothers, all my fellow men.

So broga got his yoga for men and specifically created by my bro, got instructor to cater to men's bodies and the different way that they're able to move and potentially they can move than the women's bodies. Yeah. It's unfortunately it can come across as because of this new tech bro.

Dr Dani: World that might, people might have negative connotations or first impressions of the word broga, but trust me, it's the opposite of of that. 

I'm assuming here this has the framing around broga and targeting it towards men has to do with hip flexibility, 

Designer Peter: hip and back flexibility.

Yes. Yeah, that's right. 

Dr Dani: Which could be a whole other topic, but just whole other 

Designer Peter: topic,   

Yoga and different types of yoga. Okay. Okay, [00:07:00] let's get back. Nice analogy. 

That's kind. I'm gonna take that. And so human-centered design is yoga and design thinking is the equivalent of say hatha or Bikram yoga. Yes. Nice. Okay. 

Dr Dani: Okay. So you said you had a couple of questions. Yeah. 

Designer Peter: The next question then is, or, criticism or perhaps even backlash of the, this phrase human centered and human centered design.

Is that an argument people put forward? Which I can totally understand, is that we need to move on from human-centered design and start thinking in terms of say let's say planet centered design. And the reason for that is that they believe for people who have the argument, see human-centered design as having caused a lot of our yeah.

Planetary destruction in the name of consumerism. I can see that point of view. Yeah. 

Dr Dani: I have a, I guess a controversial view on this. 

Designer Peter: Okay. 

Dr Dani: My view on this is that. The designs that have been made that we, we point to. 

Those have [00:08:00] never been in interest of humans.

Those have been made in the interest of profit. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: So those things are profit centered design. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: Because to me, if we are creating things that are truly good for humans, the planet is our home. It's our only home. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: So it needs to be a consideration because we want to create things that are good for humans and burning down their home is not good for humans.

 Something that's very relevant right now, I dunno if you've seen the documentary on the whole fast fashion.

Designer Peter: Fast fashion. Yeah. There you 

Dr Dani: go. What they talk about is. all of that is not really about the consumer. It's actually about triggering this buying behavior in humans.

But if you follow that reasoning, it has nothing to do with humans. It has nothing to do with human need. It has to do with the need for profit. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: So I think I don't think the, so I think we're labeling things [00:09:00] as human-centered design or mislabeling things as human-centered design. Yeah.

So I do understand what the criticism around we need to be thinking about the planet, but if we're thinking about humans in a holistic way then the planet is part of that. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent agree. And actually it's something I had to, I was, it was yeah, I had to examine my reaction to that argument because I've always, I.

Yeah, I guess I've always seen that if it was going to be a true, like you said, true human-centered design, we, it takes into account our environment, the planet we live on. So yeah. Totally agree with that. Which I guess leads us, that to me that leads us into the next part of Ian's question, which is, this phrase human-centered systems thinking.

Are we ready to get into the systems thinking? Have we covered off our definition of human-centered design enough? I think we have. 

Dr Dani: Yeah. Yeah. Let's let's get into, so what is systems thinking? 

Designer Peter: Should we ask the [00:10:00] internet dictionary or Wikipedia definition of systems thinking as a starting point?

Dr Dani: Sure. 

Designer Peter: Okay. Systems thinking. Systems thinking is a way of making sense of the complexity of the world by looking at it in terms of wholes and relationships rather than splitting it down into its parts.

It says it has been used as a way of exploring and developing effective action in complex context. Enabling systems, change systems thinking draws on and contributes to systems theory and the system sciences. 

Dr Dani: Unpacking that a little bit. Systems thinking is also a holistic approach. 

Systems thinking calls for is to understand the relationships and interactions within a system. 

Rather than going, the problem is happening here, so let's focus our efforts on this part instead going, okay, the problem is happening here, but what is, so let's say in an organization there's a big problem on the sales [00:11:00] team.

Traditionally we would go, okay, let's put all of our attention to see what's happening on the sales team. And what systems thinking is saying. Is it, no, you have to examine the problem and all of the interaction. So we would go, so who does sales interact with? What's happening there? We look at inputs and outputs and we look at upstream and downstream impacts rather than just isolating.

Designer Peter: Yeah. And I think this is where our perspective on human-centered design. It definitely, I dunno whether the term is overlaps or expands into, or yeah. When we talk about human-centered design needing to be the same as planet centered design, to me that's that's really similar to, that's a system, I guess a systems thinking perspective on it.

Dr Dani: Both systems thinking and human centric design call for more holistic thinking and moving away from isolating things and looking at it because, in design thinking we talk about, we actually have to understand the environment that somebody [00:12:00] is experiencing a problem.

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: And that very much aligns to what systems thinking says, which it says you have to understand all of the things that are and the idea behind both of those things is that problems don't exist in isolation. 

Designer Peter: Yes. 

Dr Dani: Yeah. And the risk of, and I see this happening, in our society, in our communities, in our organizations, and even in our homes.

When we don't understand that holistic view, we end up creating a solution that solves this problem, but then has all of these other then that, unintended consequences. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Exactly. And I think that's one of the guiding principles of systems thinking. And I suppose therefore, human-centered systems thinking or human-centered systems design, doing our, using a, an approach methodical approach to under understand and predict as far as possible unintended consequences and yeah avoiding those as much as possible. And yeah, so [00:13:00] design systems thinking we're still in our definition. I think that's, yeah, to, to me it's I guess a simple definition coming at it from a design thinking, human centered design point of view. It is really there's a good sort of phrase that I've come across in a few different books.

When we're thinking about, let's say, designing objects, so designing. You could design a bench for a railway station. You could do that in complete isolation. You could and you could take a human-centered design approach to that. You could understand, what people's needs are in their railway station and whereabouts they need to sit and how they need to sit and how long they need to sit and et cetera, et cetera.

If we start to expand that broader though, what systems thinking suggests and actually our definition of human-centered design would be like, don't just design the bench like in isolation. Think about it in its context. We've had a whole episode of context. But think about it in in the context of the particular railway station, in the context of, the town that our railway station is located [00:14:00] in, in, in the context of the railway as a network, in the context of the society that the that the particular town is, and et cetera, keep expanding outwards until I guess you're, eventually thinking about it in terms of the whole world. And for a the design and delivery of a bench within our railway station, you'd start to think about where is the bench? Where are the raw materials coming from?

Who's making it? What are the unintended consequences of us placing an order for a hundred steel railway benches to be used in, Auckland, Britomart Station, for example. Whereabouts are they coming from? What are the global impacts on transporting them from abroad? Or who's digging the raw materials outta the ground? 

That's where my mind, so instead of just thinking about the bench and what needs it solving for commuters at a railway station. Deliberately and methodically expand our thinking to consider everything and even, I guess thinking forwards into the future, into [00:15:00] eventually that bench will become obsolete through use.

Designer Peter: Or the materials might break down, so what's gonna happen to it afterwards and how do we deal with that?

Dr Dani: What's, what this is bringing to mind is something in behavioral science we talk about is the Cobra effect.

Designer Peter: Aha. I was hoping one of us would talk about the cobras. Yeah. Yeah. 

Dr Dani: And if you're not familiar with the Cobra effect it's this idea that , you solve one problem. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: But you didn't think through the implications of your solution, so now you've ended up creating other problems.

 A fable that goes behind it, which is that community was experiencing lots of cobras. In an attempt to cut down or, address the cobra problem, they told people that for every dead cobra they bought in, they would get a certain amount of money.

And what that led to is people breeding cobras than killing them and bringing them in. They get money.  

And then what happened is when they [00:16:00] discontinued that, now people were just releasing all these cobras, so now you've actually made the cobra situation worse. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. And for clarity, I think most people will know.

But cobra's a deadly snake. So the original problem to solve was people dying of snake bites. Yes. And the end result of all this intended intervention was more people were dying of snake bites 'cause there were more cobras. 

Dr Dani: I know when we hear about the Cobra effect it as it seems silly, but we see this happening in organizations all the time. 

We make decisions. Without thinking through the implications of unintended consequences. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Organizations and societies. This is on a different scale and a different, a different I guess you it's a different system altogether, but d different consequences.

So I remember before I left Britain sometime in the early two thousands the government introduced a ban on smoking in pubs. Amazing initiative from a health point of view. I do not miss walking out of a pub [00:17:00] or any sort of, entertainment venue and stinking of cigarette smoke or not being able to speak the next day.

'cause I was hoarse from other people's cigarette smoke. And obviously it's had significant impact on deaths from lung cancer. 'cause, passive smoking is as bad for his active smoking. But the unintended consequence, or I think it was an unintended consequence, was that the number of pubs closing down, went through a bit of a hockey stick curve, those a very significant impact on.

People's social lives. People no longer went to, or lots of people no longer went to the pub to have a drink and a cigarette. And, on the one hand that might be another good public health outcome. But on the other hand what we started to see even feel was the kind of one of the mainstays of community and society started to when the local village pub closes down, then where do people go to get together and have a conversation?

A relaxed conversation, in the evening. Some might argue, over a pint or two you could have a civilized [00:18:00] conversation with somebody from who had different particular opinions than you when it came to politics or religion or anything. The unintended consequence of the smoking ban was that pubs closed down and a really important element of a lot of villages and towns disappeared and wasn't replaced.

And people stay at home now and are more isolated than they were before. 

Dr Dani: Another example that I'll give you, and this became pretty prevalent when privacy breaches Yeah. Were a big thing. 

So lots of organizations' response to this was because we know that pri most privacy breaches happen because of human error. 

They started to introduce a punitive approach when a when a privacy breach happened. And so guess what happened? Guess what happened? If you un, if you, by mistake, human error did something that resulted in a privacy breach and you knew you were gonna get in trouble for it.

Whether it was a genuine mistake or not, what do you [00:19:00] think they did? 

Designer Peter: I think there was fewer privacy breaches reported Dani. 

Dr Dani: There were fewer privacy breaches reported. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: But the impact to customer's data. So the thing with privacy breaches it's really important when there's a privacy breach that you identify it, you report it.

There's a whole lot of things that need to happen in a very specific time constraint. But what was happening is people were hiding it. 

Designer Peter: So 

Dr Dani: privacy breaches dropped and you're , oh, ever since we introduced these punitive measures, privacy breaches are dropping. 

They weren't dropping.

They were just not being reported, but the impact to the organization was even worse because they technically weren't taking the actions they needed to. 

So this is why you have to really, it's particularly in organizations when you are thinking about incentives or what's the opposite of incentives, punishments, 

Disincentives. You have to really think [00:20:00] through, what is the impact of this? Or what is the short term, long term impact of this?

What can possibly go wrong here? 

Designer Peter: Yeah. And it's full disclosure I'm definitely not a an accomplished or well practiced systems thinker. But I think that the key is to expand your thinking beyond, like I said, the railway bench or, stopping smoking or privacy breaches and spend time deliberately time tools, deliberately thinking, right?

So what, what, what might happen. 

Dr Dani: This is where human-centered design and system thinking plays really well, from a human-centered design perspective, you would actually go talk to the people and go, if we did this, what might happen?

Designer Peter: Yeah. And they would tell you. They would help you see the things that you can't see. They will help you, figure out what the blind spots are. 

If British government had gone to, drinkers in pubs in [00:21:00] the late nineties, early two thousands, I'm sure they did actually.

Designer Peter: But and I talked to 'em about, what'd you come to the pub for? Then, they would've started to understand that actually for a lot of people, they didn't want to or weren't allowed to smoke at home. And it was it was a that the combination of factors like smoking, drinking, and socializing with all three of those things came together and they couldn't be picked apart.

So if you can't do one, then you don't go to the pub anymore and the pub loses money and has to close down. 

Dr Dani: Yeah, I struggle with that one because Yeah. This, that was a tricky one because it's smoking rates have dropped 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: Over the years. Yeah. And I'm not saying that banning smoking in restaurants and pubs was the reason. 

But I guess that's a tough one because I agree it should be banned. 

Designer Peter: Yeah, me too, actually. So I'm sounding like I'm a proponent and supporter of, I'm not from the Tobacco lobby. I think that was a great idea. Like I said I really appreciated [00:22:00] not coming outta the pub smelling of cigarette smoke.

Some pubs you've walked in to realize that actually the smell of cigarette smoke was masking other smells and it was preferable. That's a whole other story. But yeah, I think it was great. And you know that the cigarette smoking is bad. Full stop. Yeah, I've had two grandparents die of lung cancer because they smoked.

So 100% a supporter of the ban. I but I also enjoy I'm from Scotland, but one thing that English people do really well is a country pup. And there's nothing like having a nice pint of English bitter either around the fire in the winter or outside in the beer garden. And a lot of that is disappearing.

And it's a chain of events and it is a system. So this isn't the only cause. But one of the, catalysts for pubs needing to fight for survival in some cases was the smoking ban. And it was especially impactful when there was only one pup in the village. And if 50% of the people going there on a regular basis are smokers and the 50 20 half of them don't go anymore, that's 25% less [00:23:00] patrons unless cash through the till.

I guess this is, for me, this is like systems thinking in a nutshell. You've got a really important thing to solve and it's important to solve it. At the same time, once you solve that, there are other problems to to think about and solve. And it goes beyond just, the, it's all, everything's connected.

We'll may, jumping to conclusions or jumping into our next section, but for me, systems thinking about acknowledging that every single thing is connected, we're all woven together and everything is woven together in a web of meaning and purpose, problems and opportunities. 

Dr Dani: It comes back to basics of physics, right?

For every action. Yeah. There's an equal and opposite reaction. Yeah. And that applies to human behavior as well. Yeah. Yeah. Something happens in our environment and we will react to it. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: The thing is, , when we make changes to the environment, we need to be mindful. We're never gonna a hundred percent be able to predict what people are going to do, but we can be [00:24:00] intentional.

 What this comes down to is and this is again, where systems thinking and design thinking marry really well. Because design thinking will help you think about, okay, if that's how we're going to, this is that whole, how do we want people to feel? How do we want people to act? What do we want them to do?

Think, feel, do. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. 

Dr Dani: And we can again. We don't have crystal balls, so we can't predict what they're going to do a hundred percent, but we can actually shape the solutions in a way that makes it easier for people to adopt it, for people to engage with it. And also fundamentally, when people are involved in creating something, they are more likely to engage in it, which is called the Ikea effect.

Designer Peter: Oh we'll come back to that in just a second. Yeah. So the IKEA effect, you could tell us about that, 

Dr Dani: I'm assuming here that everybody knows about ikea. 

They are the [00:25:00] company that makes put, buy the furniture in flat packs 

And you bring it home. And you build your own furniture. 

Designer Peter: Yep. 

Dr Dani: So it's called the I Ikea effect, because when you are part of building something, when you have had input or say, or physically built something, you value that thing more.

You want to see it be successful, you want to see it do well.  

 We could leverage that in change and adoption and design,  

when we engage people in creating the solution and implementing the solution, they take ownership of it. It's a brain thing that happens.

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. 

Dr Dani: And when they take ownership of it, they have more of a desire. Motivation to see it succeed. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. That makes a lot of sense to me. Especially someone who, I love putting IKEA furniture together. I know lots of people don't, hence the thriving businesses that will do it for you. 

Dr Dani: It's probably one of the hardest things for me to get rid of.

As I was moving up in life, Uhhuh and, getting, I don't wanna say real furniture, 'cause Ikea furniture is real [00:26:00] furniture. 

Designer Peter: Sorry. Yes. Yeah. 

Dr Dani: I was really sad 

Designer Peter: Uhhuh 

Dr Dani: getting rid of my Ikea furniture because I put them together, yeah. I have very vivid memories in my first apartment, like putting together IKEA furniture.

Designer Peter: Nice. I love it. Yeah. I've still got yeah, same. And I still have Ikea, Ikea furniture. I think we need to do a different episode on this, on kind of value proposition because, as you, you know what? Yeah, we do. I'll leave that there. Okay. Ikea. Nice. 

Dr Dani: The other thing I want to bring up is that design thinking also provides an element that leads very well into systems thinking, which is our three lenses. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: Desirability, viability, feasibility, which we've done episodes on as well. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: That's, that also provides an entryway into that systems thinking.

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. I think you mean because you you do mean you're implying that those three lenses, we can look through those lenders and apply them to, let's say [00:27:00] like nano tiny micro kind of moments in our lives, in somebody's life all the way out to, global global problems.

Literally like the climate crisis, for example. We look at the problems and the solutions and find the right the right blend of desirable, feasible, viable, whether it's, somebody's daily life or huge planetary Yeah. Problems. 

Dr Dani: And if you, if we take that back to the Cobra problem, right?

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. 

Dr Dani: And if somebody said, okay, so the desire is to reduce the number of Cobra bites.  

The way we're gonna solve that is we're gonna pay people. 

You could have walked through, okay, how viable is this? 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: And how feasible is this? And this is where I think if you're having those types of conversations, what might be the unintended consequences?

You can start. Driving that, thinking to that. 

Designer Peter: Yeah, I think so. 'cause then if you go if it's viable from [00:28:00] a society point of view and the council or the government, whoever was paying for the cobra heads then you kind of circle, I always think of those desirable fight, feasible, viable.

You kinda cycle through them. You go through a spiral. They start wide and then narrow down through it, spiral into the middle where you've got that sweet spot where they overlap in the right way for the particular situation. But you could moving on from like the viable, so yeah. Okay. We can afford to be on a dollar a corporate ahead.

Okay. So it's desirable for somebody to get paid that. And you go, why is it desirable for somebody to get paid for Cobra? What are they gonna do with it? Ah, okay. So they need the income. Okay, so they're gonna spend income on what? Okay. And then you keep going cycling onwards. Okay. So if that's what they're gonna spend the money on, then what, what's gonna make it feasible? Yeah. I think you would keep going through that logical sequence of examining the situation and probably come to the conclusion that, eventuated. 

Dr Dani: And sometimes when I when I talk about this, people always go why can't we just ask the question?

What are the [00:29:00] unintended consequences? 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. 

Dr Dani: The challenge with that is we fall in love with an idea, 

Designer Peter: yeah. 

Dr Dani: And once we fall in love with an idea, we get, beer goggles, if you will. We just can only see that idea as the. World's perfect idea. It's, if you talk bad about this idea, I, you are just crazy.

We follow in up with ideas. 

Designer Peter: I'm loving this idea of beer goggles for idea. I'm gonna, what was your takeaway in the important subject of human-centered systems thinking idea, beer goggles.

Dr Dani: If that is what you end up taking away from this, that is awesome. So that next time you come up with an idea and you're obsessed with an idea. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: The idea beer goggles pop up. Yeah. But this happens. Yeah. And then we, our brains just shut down to the possibility of what could go wrong.

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. 

Dr Dani: This is where really forcing ourselves to see through [00:30:00] these lenses can help because it is not threatening the idea. We're still, we're still cool with the idea. We just wanna understand does it meet these things? 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. Nice.

And actually I thought that's just pass through my mind as we were talking about beer cockles and lenses and I guess doing, thinking ahead to the unintended consequence of doing like the premortem, if you like, on some something good old Edward de Bonos thinking hats.

So he had people aren't familiar with the thinking hats. He had a, an idea of in a group conversation or even as an individual you imagine that there are. And please just imagine them rather than actually have them imagine different colored hats. And each different colored hat represents a slightly different perspective on a situation.

So black hat thinking is thinking of all the things that go wrong. So yeah, pretty helpful. When it comes to imagining unintended consequences. 

Dr Dani: And that's what design [00:31:00] thinking and human-centered design forces us to do. It's like perspective taking, being able to see things from multiple from multiple lenses.

Yeah. 

Designer Peter: We've moved on from, I think we, hopefully we covered off our definitions and we did talk about why it's important and I hope that's come across. We don't want there to be more cobras at the end than the beginning or we do want to solve public health.

Issues. But we don't want society to fall apart. Yeah. And we have got into the, how do we practice systems thinking? And maybe for us it's okay, so we're pretty familiar with our capabilities as design thinkers and some of our tools and our general approach.

What might we add onto that or expand outwards to include when we're thinking about a system that includes the thing that we are designing. 

Dr Dani: So we've started to talk about the three lenses. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. 

Dr Dani: Is one, one way that we could [00:32:00] approach that the other one comes in when we do empathetic exploration.   

Part of that process needs to be understanding, okay, so this problem is, who are you interacting with? Who else might be impacted? What's the step before this? What's the step after this? Really asking those types of questions.

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. Nice. 

Dr Dani: That's another one. 

Also, I will say this kind of related, not related in terms of the how of systems thinking when somebody comes to you with an idea, regardless of how crazy the idea is. The least effective way to knock down a crazy idea is to call it a crazy idea.

Because the more you discredit an idea, the more the person posing that idea is gonna hold onto it. 

Designer Peter: Okay. 

Dr Dani: The better option is to go, okay, let's talk through what that might look like. If we [00:33:00] were gonna implement this, what is the next thing? Who do we need to talk to? So you start asking these exploratory kind of questions to start laying out how will we make this happen?

And most of the time what happens and I say most 

Because, there's a lot of intellect, self EQ and IQ that that play a role in this. But if you ask those types of questions, people generally start to see the flaw in their idea. 

Or what they're thinking about doing.

 And now you're not dismissing them. You're helping them understand why this idea needs to be dismissed. And then you can say, okay, so now that we know why this won't work, is there some elements of this idea that we could take and build some new things on?

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. I love that idea of helping people on that, just thinking, helping them think through their idea. It reminds me of, and I think it's the same thing, and I hope I get the [00:34:00] terminology right. And it does lead to a little bit of a story and another maybe going back towards why this is important.

But this term normative loop. Are you familiar with that? Normative? So I think what you've just described is a normative loop, isn't it? It's it's not telling somebody you've got a bad idea, but helping them see their own idea and having them draw their own conclusion that, and this isn't such a great idea after all.

I first heard that term from someone called John Sadden, who is a systems thinking I guess advocate and his organization I think he's still part of it and runs it, called Vanguard Associates. And I came across them when I was living and working in the UK and my early career.

And I kinda grew up in, in an organization as part of a kind of call center environment and system our way of serving our customers. And the organization I worked for then was, still in, primarily in call center rather than digitally.

And, I experienced this firsthand as a call center, a kind of agent as well as somebody who helped improve call center environments and this kind [00:35:00] of unattended consequence and what John said and was. Promoting at the time and still talks about is something called failure demand. So failure demand is an unintended consequence of it within a system.

And the example that I experienced was the failure demand created in companies running call centers, where I guess there the, they were setting up their system including their incentives for individuals and managers and teams to, and they were basing it on things like number of calls a person would answer during a shift.

And measuring things like average handling time, which is the amount of time on average they would spend on each phone call. Now those of us who have spoken to people in a contact center, especially back in those days, they would probably have felt like they were being rushed to get off the phone as quickly as possible because the person you were speaking to was being incentivized to get through as many calls as possible.

And that was because there were lots of people waiting to speak. So [00:36:00] at the first level if you were being hurried off the phone as, as quickly as possible, a large percentage of people were not getting the problem that they called up to get resolved. Resolved. So they would go away, discover that the problem wasn't solved, and they would call back again.

So that's a level one failure demand. Like the problem, the calls were simply, building up because the incentive and the system was designed to answer as many calls as possible. On the false assumption that answering lots of calls and having a low average handling time would reduce the overall number of calls coming to the system.

That's kinda level one, level two failure demand, is. Failing to examine why people are calling in the first place in the not because they haven't had the problem solved. It's like, why did they have that problem? So you have to, in, in an organization or in a system, think about and go backwards in time and examine and like we're saying, understand what [00:37:00] is, what are people not getting in the product that you're creating for them.

And in an insurance company in those days, there was, manyfold, one of them being elsewhere in the call center system, salespeople were being incentivized to sell things as much as possible. And that meant that they were selling things to people that they didn't actually want. And as soon as the customers discovered that they'd been sold something that they didn't need or want, they would call back to say, I don't want this.

So yeah, failure demand, it's often it's, I think for me it's a. A great example of if you don't consider things in a system, I guess the contrast to that is I would like to hope that more organizations who have call centers rather than incentivizing agents on number of calls and average handling time, what they're incentivizing people on is solving customers problems first time, which is why as customers, another unintended consequence is surveys that come to us to the point of annoyance asking us if we've had our problem solved. The company's [00:38:00] trying to understand whether that's the case so that they can reward the person for not getting the customer off the phone as quickly as possible by actually spending as much time as they need to solve that customer's problem so that they don't call back.

And if they're smart, then they'll also use that information to feed back into their product development and marketing areas to go, Hey, here's something you need to change about your product so that we don't even get those customers calling up in the first place, nevermind for a second or third time.

So that was John said in his normative loop. And my, I guess that was my first introduction to systems thinking. And it was kinda mind blowing at the time. 

Dr Dani: There's a couple of things you're touching on here that I think was worth diving into a little bit. Cool. One is that when something happens, when there is a problem, we have a tendency to.

Blame the problem on the people. 

Designer Peter: Yes. 

Dr Dani: And we fail to realize that the system is going to always work Exactly how it was designed to work. 

Yeah. But mentally we go, our contact center, [00:39:00] volumes are ridiculous because our people aren't doing what they need to do.

Yeah. Idiots 

Designer Peter: just needs to train them better. 

Dr Dani: Exactly. Stand 

Designer Peter: over their shoulders and shout at 'em until they answer call. 

Dr Dani: But no one goes, hang on. The system's gonna work exactly how it was designed to work. So if those things aren't in place, well-meaning people come to work every day trying to do a good job, but they're not set up for success.

And this is where that systems thinking is really important because you need to look at that. Okay, our call volumes are up. Why? 

Designer Peter: Yeah, the 

Dr Dani: system thing. Is it a process thing? And oftentimes, we love to blame the people. It's not the people, it's the It's process and systems. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: Which are the two things that never get addressed, but we're like, let's just do some more training.

Let's introduce some new incentives. Let's do metrics. And don't get me wrong, incentives and metrics and training, all of those things are important. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: But you cannot do them in [00:40:00] isolation. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Totally agree. You're reminding me of a quote. So that, that world of call centers led me into lean Six Sigma and becoming a black belt in that process improvement methodology, which I was most interested in that, the human side of that, hence why we're talking on this podcast about design thinking Dani.

But w Edward Deming, who was the American scientist to depending on the story ti he went to Japan, learned all about Japanese manufacturing and brought the method back to the states. I think it was actually, he took some stuff from the states to Japan. He was a good idea spreader share.

Anyway, his, he's got some amazing wonderful quotes and one of them is a bad system will be a good person every time. That that resonates with the situation. And it's, no, it's hardly ever the individual person, in fact, I would say never the individual person that is the system that they are part of.

And to me that's get curious about what the system's doing and why it's leading to somebody behaving in a way that [00:41:00] is not helpful. 

Dr Dani: Yeah, absolutely. And this is why we see sometimes a players go in, somebody that has been a high performer, goes into a new team or a new company and they fail.

And so you go why was this person so successful here? Not successful here. 

Yeah. Same person, same capabilities. It's not like they've just, dumped a bunch of their capabilities on their way out. Yeah. This is them. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. 

Dr Dani: Like the context, the environment is very important to success.

Designer Peter: Yeah. Very. 

Dr Dani: And so then why is it that we don't think about context? Because thinking about context is complicated. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: Hard is much easier for me to blame all of this on Peter. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: Or the contact center team or the finance team. It is a lot easier to do that than to go, hang on, let's look at this from a, 

Designer Peter: yeah.

I can't remember where I picked this up from, but I love the phrase whether we're, what, [00:42:00] whatever position we hold when we're looking at a situation, whether it's a problem or a positive situation. But, this phrase tough on the facts, easy on the reasons. The facts are that, if we're going back to the call center days, the facts are that we aren't answering customer's calls, but let's get let's not be tough on, the person let's be easy on, on, when I say easy on the reasons, it means, be open-minded and take time to examine all the different possibilities rather than jumping to conclusions. Yeah. 

Dr Dani: So I'll give you another example to really show this and bring this to life. Back, many years ago when I worked in the regulatory space and again, back to privacy breaches, so all bankers were told do not send customer sensitive data via email. 

Because that is, it's not secured. All of that. And despite multiple communications, trainings, videos, pamphlets, [00:43:00] stories, this was still happening. So then they were starting to introduce this. Punitive approach to if you do this and we catch you, we're going to, you get written up, 

Designer Peter: yeah. 

Dr Dani: And I just found it really weird.  

 Why would people understand the risk and still do it? 

This is their livelihood. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: So I just went out and asked them can you tell me what's happening here? Not in a threatening way, not in a, why are you not doing this? Why are you doing this?

Not in that sort of way, but tell, help me understand. What does it look like when you're, need to send things to customers walk me through this. 

And what I found out is that they were told don't send it through email, but they weren't given an alternative way to do it.

At the same time they had all of these service level agreements to meet. So they weren't given an alternative to email, but they were still being measured on the speed of getting certain tasks [00:44:00] done. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. 

Dr Dani: Well-meaning good employees were failing, but they weren't failing 'cause they were cre at their job.

They weren't failing. 'cause they just didn't care. They weren't failing. They weren't failing for anything that we could blame on them. Yeah. So then I said, have you, is this an issue that has been reported? And they're like, yes. And we were just told to make it work.

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: And then I went back and looked and, there were many emails and, trying to feed this information back to the top. They genuinely tried and then they just, make it work. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Make it work. So they,  

They did Nice. Good story, Dani. I took us back into, to I think what, why it's important, but yeah thanks for listening to that story back to how when we were touching on our capabilities.

Yeah. I think this empathetic exploring as ever yeah. Starting to understand people and their situation like you were [00:45:00] just describing. I also think you, you've touched on something, but for me when I mean designing full stop, especially when it comes to systems, I think visualizing things because of the complexity, like systems are complex and, and that's why we don't commonly.

I think in terms of them and also spend time trying to understand them and solve the systemic problems. 'cause it's just difficult for our brains. And I'm sure you've got some, reasons for that are simple but complicated. It's difficult for us to hold so much information.

So visualizing, mapping things out I think is really powerful. I think a really great thing to do at the beginning of any initiative when we're designing something as a stakeholder map. Now a systems map is a kind of more expansive version to me, at least of a stakeholder map. So we're thinking about stakeholders, but if we just I mentioned nano all the way through to global.

If you draw some concentric circles in a stakeholder map and keep expanding those circles out to, go back to that railway bench example. Okay. Let's imagine stakeholders within the environment of the [00:46:00] train station, then environment within the town and within the region. Then within the railway as a whole and the country and the et cetera.

You keep going out and out. And that's a visual, if you start with those circles and give your brain the questions and the prompts our brains like to fill in gaps and, if we create the gaps, then we can start to, if not fill them in, at least be curious about what those gaps are.

Dr Dani: And then once you've got all those different stakeholders or parts of the system, then you can start to literally draw relationships between them. Between the railway company for example, and the city council and yeah. Yeah. 

Absolutely. The stakeholder mapping is important.

Dr Dani: I also think looking at it from a process step by step, because the thing is if you change step number three 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: You're not just changing step number three. Yeah. That is gonna have impacts and it's not easy to go, what is the impact of that? 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: And this is where we get ourselves into trouble with unintended consequences.

'cause [00:47:00] something changes in step number three. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: And there's all these other steps that are impacted, but we don't know about it. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: And this is our stakeholders, so all of these things come together. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. 

Dr Dani: And you said that, this is complex and our brains don't like complexity.

Our brains are always going to look for the easy way out. Yeah. Yeah. So brains are very, you know me, I'm a fan girl about the brain. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: It is my favorite organ. 

Yeah. 

I hesitate calling our brains lazy because it's not, our brains have an incredibly hard job.

Dr Dani: It has, it is responsible for everything that keeps us alive that we do not even think about. And on top of that, it has to navigate the day-to-day things. On top of that, it's gotta solve problems.  

 The brain is always going to prioritize keeping you alive and keeping you safe before anything else.

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: So when we sit down to solve problems, it's always going to look for the easy way out. And the easy way out feels good. So we, 95% [00:48:00] of decision making is driven by emotions. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. It 

Dr Dani: feels good. So I'm gonna go with that. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: It takes a lot of mental energy and this is why big problems don't get solved.

Yeah. This is why we keep living the same problem over and over again because it's easy to do something. And then the thing is, when you do the easy thing, we're like, yep, we fixed it. We've done something. Yay. We celebrate. Which reinforces the feel good factor. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. 

Dr Dani: But we've actually fixed nothing.

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. The I guess the emotional consequences of resolving and fixing a systemic issue are we, we aren't gonna get a dopamine hit from contributing to fixing a systemic issue that actually the problem won't be solved for another five years.

But, the, it's that immediacy, it 

Dr Dani: yeah. But, so thank you for, but we can build into that, right? We can actually, yeah. 

Designer Peter: Okay. Do 

Dr Dani: things like saying, Peter, I know you're working on this and this is really hard and we're not gonna see, we're not gonna [00:49:00] fully realize the benefit for the, of this for five years.

Thanks for sticking with it. Yeah, good job. Getting it through this phase. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. And that makes me consider, when we're thinking about how we do this, and especially, I think many of us, when we are presented with a sometimes a solution to implement or even a problem to solve, many of us will go, let's do some discovery.

Let's use that shortcut term. And what we discover is that's not even the right problem to solve and nevermind the right solution to implement. And as we go further through that discovery, we might like start to uncover all of these systemic issues. And I'm wondering, the question that's coming through my mind is how we find ourselves in a little bit of a dilemma sometimes, which is we could.

Examples we're working in the bank, for example, and we're asked to design let's say a new credit card. And during the course of that, what we're discovering is that availability, EAs [00:50:00] easily credit is too readily available to people in in a financially challenging situation.

So we might make it worse by creating a new credit card. I guess the question in my mind I'll get to eventually is how do we when we are, as design thinkers and we're designing something we want to take into account the system and the unintended consequences, how do we deal with that kind of dilemma?

What are your thoughts on that dilemma? Is there any specific approaches or techniques or tools or any of our capabilities that come to mind where we're in that situation? 

Dr Dani: The question around, we start down the path of trying to understand this, but then we end up understanding this meaning like a small part of something.

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: Yeah. And in the process of doing that, we uncover all these other things. Yes. And then it starts to feel overwhelming. Like you're trying to solve 50 problems now instead of one. 

Designer Peter: Yes. Essentially. Yes. And also at the same time, we've got our, [00:51:00] stakeholders the people that are asking us to solve the original problem, still needing that original and also maybe adding in an another that is still a worth it, worthwhile problem to solve.

Dr Dani: Yeah. So the practicality of work in organizations is, and actually the practicality of solving any problem 

We, it's about compartmentalizing, I'll give you an example when I do discovery work, so right now I am helping an organization improve. Their empathetic exploration muscle.

Part of that work has been discovery work. I've been talking to different parts of the organization to understand, what does this mean for them? What, why would it be important to them? How would it help them? And in the process of doing that, I have uncovered lots of other challenges.

And, people tell you things when you go out, when you go out researching. There's a thing you're researching, but then there are all the things that you will find out. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. When you 

Dr Dani: cannot control that. So what I have done is I have [00:52:00] documented all the other things that people have said.

And then I've said, okay, that is, those are all the other opportunities to be solved. But right now I've been asked to solve for this. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: So I separate them out. I am still giving the client. Hey, these are all the other things. Some of them I can help you with. The other ones. 

Designer Peter: Yeah.

Dr Dani: Not in my space. 

So all I could do is uncover it and share it and give it back to the stakeholders that have the authority to do something about it. 

This isn't an organizational setting. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: And then solve the thing that I've been tasked with solving.

Yeah. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: In the process of doing this empathy, how do we help this organization build their empathy muscle? I've also discovered actually they also need to build their collaboration muscle. 'cause they work in silos. Yeah. They're very risk averse, all of those things. 

Designer Peter: Yeah.

Dr Dani: But that wasn't the thing. So I have to raise that. 

But I have to focus on this now. What I could also do is as I'm building the solution [00:53:00] for helping them build their empathy muscle, 

I can try to fold in some elements of collaboration. I can try to fold in some pieces on, healthy balanced risk.

So I can do that because I have awareness of that. So that's how I handle that in an organizational context. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: Does that answer your question? It 

Designer Peter: does, yes. That's great. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. And go back to that kind of normative loop guiding people on their journey. You're almost doing that going, Hey, yeah, we can definitely do this.

By the way, there's also these other related, sometimes broader, sometimes more specific issues or opportunities that we can look at next. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. And again, visualizing that can be really helpful. Show, showing people these are relationships between the different outputs inputs and kind of factors and relation, within your organization and the system that it operates within.

Dr Dani: Yeah. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Nice. 

Dr Dani: In, in the marriage of design thinking and [00:54:00] systems thinking. Yeah. Another one of the design thinker capabilities that's really useful is ideation. So I generate ideas. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. 

Dr Dani: With a little bit of a twist, we tend to use ideation or there's this misnomer that ideation is only useful at the start of something.

Earlier I said, let's say somebody comes up with what you think is a crazy idea. 

We can actually use ideation to navigate that, 

how might we make that idea work? 

Designer Peter: Oh, nice. Yeah. Yeah, I like that.  

How might we understand the 

Implications, the consequences, whether intended or otherwise? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. I like that a lot. One of the ones, one of our capabilities I guess I'm intrigued by and this shows that I haven't, I worked on anything that's a really big systemic issue yet.

But I would like to is this idea of curious experimentation and I guess my I'm really interested in your thoughts and your experience with this, Dani, but you've got, so I think in terms of a, [00:55:00] my mental model, at least at the moment is of if we have a systemic problem or opportunity to work on, then by definition it's complex.

It's large scale is probably something that's gonna take, time to see the consequences of and that's in contrast to my kind of, again, mental model of the way I like to use curious experimentation especially is, putting prototypes out into the world and quickly learning, what does this thing do?

What is the impact of this thing? And look to me, those two things. At the moment at least, are opposite ends of a scale and time and risk and investment spectrum, if that makes sense. So I'm cur I guess the question is I think there, there must be opportunity to be curiously experimenting within a system, but how does that kind of play out in terms of scale, time, et cetera?

Dr Dani: Remember how I said a system or design, it will function exactly [00:56:00] how it's designed? 

Designer Peter: Another thing 

Dr Dani: that is true about the system is that the system is always going to fight for its survival. 

Designer Peter: Okay? The 

Dr Dani: system does not give a crap about you, the customer. So this is why. This is why we see, and this is also why I feel like there's a lot of mistrust in large entities. 

 The system will always find a way to survive. 

Because the system is bigger than the components.  

This is also why climate change is really worrying because the earth will survive. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. 

Dr Dani: The earth has existed before humans. It will exist after humans.

So the thing that will won't be here. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: Or the problem that the earth sees as the problem. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. 

Dr Dani: Systems will always resist against the thing that is trying to change them because it sees it as a threat. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

Dr Dani: That's really important to understand because when we bring in things like curious experimentation, the system's going [00:57:00] to resist it.

And it is going to. Pile up the reasons why. And you have to dismantle that one by one and small steps. Okay. So that's the big macro view of it.  

The more micro view of it is when I get told experimenting is a waste of time. We just need to pick a solution and go with it.

Some of the things that I apply there is how has that worked in the past? 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: Yeah. And a lot of times the problem that I'm there helping to solve is because the solution they have now isn't working. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. So 

Dr Dani: if I can go isn't that what you did with this solution and it didn't work? 

 This idea that experimenting is going to take a long time is also a misnomer. I've worked with teams and we have actually experimented with some ideas within the span of a session. And go, actually let's get rid of these three ideas, but these two are viable.

So let's take, so it happens in iterations, right? The first iteration might be really [00:58:00] quick experimentation. Let's say you've got five ideas. 

We experiment, very rudimentary, and we're like let's get rid of these three. 'cause they're just not. Now that we've done some stuff with it, now we've got two.

So how might we test this in a way that is, that takes a little bit more effort, but now you're only doing it with two ideas. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. 

Dr Dani: It requires that shift in, in mindset. 

But also realistically, the places that end up being open to and becoming really good at experimenting, it comes to leadership.

It takes a lot of bravery from. Leaders to hold the space to do that. 

Designer Peter: And I guess also an ability of the leadership to have a really good understanding of not all the details within it, but have a good understanding of the system and how things relate to each other. 

Dr Dani: Yes and no.

Designer Peter: Okay. 

Dr Dani: The job of leaders isn't to know everything. Yeah. You have to have some level of [00:59:00] understanding to make sure that, your people aren't telling you to do something that's just gonna sink the company. But being a leader isn't about knowing everything No. Or having all the right answers.

It's actually about making sure you have the right players on the team with the right capabilities. Trusting their expertise. 

And leaving them to do their jobs and, doing the roadblocks, doing, removing the roadblocks, being the enabler. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: Addressing performance when it isn't happening, that is the job of the leader.

It's not to be an expert. You hire experts to do the work. Yeah. But to your point, I do recognize like they have to have some understanding, high level, big picture understanding of how different aspects of the organization are connected work. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I just add to your I think adding to your list of leadership job, I think is also to not have the right answers, but [01:00:00] definitely do spend time thinking of the good questions that are gonna help elicit 

Dr Dani: is what we learned from you on a couple of episodes ago. 

Designer Peter: The power of 

Dr Dani: asking good questions. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Go and listen to that episode. If you're listening to this one, I haven't 

Dr Dani: yet. Yes. Great episode. That's fantastic.

Designer Peter: Definitely with John Bennett about the power of questions.

Cool, Dani just thinking of our listeners time here, starting to come to the end of this enjoyable exploration of Ian's question about human centered systems thinking, hopefully we're starting to answer Ian's question. We've definitely answered what was our thoughts on human centered, some of them anyway.

Anything else to add in terms of our design thinker capabilities, 

Dr Dani: Particularly when we're thinking about combining systems thinking and design thinking empathy, collaboration, which we've touched on.

Did we touch on. Collective collaboration. No, we 

Designer Peter: didn't actually. My thoughts on that are, it's, it's always important, but in a systems context, it's even more important [01:01:00] to, to collaborate with people who are from across the wider system, not just within a component of that. And who know it just enough that they can imagine and see, they can see how the system works as a whole.

And also imagine how it might work differently. And I say just enough I guess, because sometimes when you know a lot and you're really embedded into a system, then it's actually more and more challenging to see how it could be different. It's potentially a controversial point of view to add than right at the end of the podcast there.

But 

Dr Dani: Problem solving. Is more successful when we collaborate. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: The way that the way that most organizations collaborate is broken. That is a completely different episode. 

Yeah. But it is a fundamental thing that is needed. No good solutions come in isolation. And also we know in our practice that empathy and collaboration they go hand in hand, right?

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yeah. [01:02:00] Nice. And then situational optimizing. Looking at that one, I'm thinking well, absolutely a hundred percent. But maybe I would think about replacing the word situation with system. 

For the context of systems thinking or systems design, but. 

Dr Dani: I don't know that I would do that because the situation is the prompter to look at the system. Ah, 

Designer Peter: okay. 

Dr Dani: So how do we optimize this situation within the system? 

Designer Peter: Okay. That's 

Dr Dani: how I see it. 

Designer Peter: Nice. Maybe that is coming back to the question I asked about what do we do when we're asked to optimize the situation but uncover issues within the system and actually come bring it full circle is start by optimizing the situation.

'cause we know that'll start to have a positive knock on effect on the on the system. Okay. Accepted. 

Dr Dani: Some of the key takeaways here are that systems thinking and human-centered design [01:03:00] work really well together. And I think they both have elements that pull, on each other that they're woven together really nicely.

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: And help to elevate problem solving. In lots of unsaid ways as design thinkers, we actually engage in systems thinking. We may not 

Designer Peter: explicitly 

Dr Dani: call it out. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Agreed. Yeah, agreed. 

Dr Dani: The other thing I'll say is, whether it's design thinking, human-centered design, systems, thinking, whatever else thing that you are passionate about.

The people that need help, the people that thing will help, don't really give a crap about No. What it is. Yeah. They just want their problem solved. So one of the most effective things that you could do is just shut up about talking about those things and then just do it. And when they experience the outcome.

 It's a hard fight to sell systems thinking, design thinking, human-centered design. [01:04:00] It's a easier sell to go, right? This is your problem. Here's how I'll go about solving it without lecturing people on what it is. I know. Saying that is very ironic because our whole podcast is about talking about Yeah.

Design thinking. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Yes. I definitely see that irony. But that's something very important to have in mind as, yeah, people took care as much as we do about how we're doing things. They care about their problem and what needs solving, and that's the starting point and the and the end point. 

Nice. 

Dr Dani: Okay. So we usually wrap up with some takeaways. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. Thanks Dani. What are our takeaways? Do you have any of the top of mind? 

Dr Dani: I've really enjoyed getting a question from a listener, so thank you, Ian. 

Designer Peter: Yeah. 

Dr Dani: And perhaps a takeaway is figuring out how do we get more of our listeners to send us questions.

Designer Peter: Nice. 

Dr Dani: So one, we answered [01:05:00] the questions and also, yeah, I'm curious what other questions do people have about this topic? 

Designer Peter: Me too. I love that idea, Dani. Yeah, let's take that as a joint takeaway. We'll figure out a way for people to join the conversation. And we'll we'll let you know how that is, where that is.

Takeaways for me, I think. Yeah. Thanks Ian for the question. Check out Ian Scott, you'll be on LinkedIn and his new organization, the Scott Collective. And yeah, I hope we've helped you in your thinking and certainly it's been enjoyable to reflect and think about what is this relationship between human centered design thinking and human centered systems thinking.

And yeah, maybe my takeaway is just to make it more explicit that this should be part of our practice. We should take moments when we're, taking our design thinking approach to just consider the unintended consequences and the wider system that this thing is part [01:06:00] of.

And like you suggested Dani, like deal with the potential overwhelm by documenting what we're discovering and uncovering and communicating that to our sponsors, our stakeholders so that, while we continue to solve a problem, we're also putting on our collective kind of roadmap what the other specific or way their broader problems to solve are.

Dr Dani: Love it. 

Designer Peter: Me too.

Dr Dani: That does it for us this time. Thanks everyone for listening. 

Designer Peter: Thanks for listening, everyone, speak to you next time. 

Dr Dani: Speak to you next time. Bye 

Designer Peter: bye.