Herding cats and solving complex design problems
Solving complex problems often requires a full team rather than a single hero designer. But teamwork and collaboration bread difficult communication obstacles that must be overcome in order to keep a team in sync and solving for the same outcome.
Teams sync when they share common ground. An effective and efficient way to build common ground and sync design efforts is to imagine a real-world example that both inspires a team and accurately relates to a design problem.
Key advantages to using examples in Product Design:
- Real-world examples provide common ground to sync team design efforts
- Imagination produces actionable insights to solve complex problems
- Stories inspire team vision for outcomes
Real-world examples provide common ground to sync team design efforts
When teams collaborate live, the reality is a hodge podge of individual people with individual ideas attempting to synthesis their work in real-time.
As you can imagine, the process of sharing ideas can be abstract and it is incredibly difficult to articulate a single vision that resonates with an entire team.
Real-world examples come to the rescue by taking something familiar, such as the way fish move in schools or why people choose which line to wait in, and apply that understanding to an abstract problem.
Is the problem like a school of fish or is it like people waiting in line? Example’s cut through ambiguity and put teams on the same page.
Application: Come up with an example from the real-world with similar mechanics to the design problem at hand. Then observe how that problem is or can be solved in the real-world in order to inform your own team’s design.
Imagination produces actionable insights to solve complex problems
10 years ago, a commercial ran for the information technology company, EDS. The video below connected the familiar phenomenon of herding cattle with the divergent example of herding cats.
Although the ad was absurd and a bit silly, it helped customers understand EDS and its services by contrasting the abstract concept of moving data with the somewhat familiar concept of herding cattle.
The brilliant element to the commercial was the absurd twist which transformed the customer’s understanding of data. EDS communicated that it doesn’t move cattle, it moves cats.
That is to say, EDS’ data solutions were more complex and advanced. People expect moving data to be like herding cattle, but the commercial communicated something else entirely in an insightful manner.
In terms of solving design problems, the EDS design team could use the same example to uncover actionable insights about designing their flow of data. Working from the example, the team could guide their thinking to solve for facilitation, communication, and technical problems through framing their problems with this example.
How you define a problem influences how you solve it. Examples help teams frame their problems with accuracy and familiarity.
Application: Embrace absurdity in your examples. A humorous take on herding cattle can mean the difference between good design and truly insightful design.
Stories inspire team vision for outcomes
For many teams, settling on a shared vision for outcomes is a large communication obstacle since complexity breads ambiguity. Ambiguity can divide a team and work against effective collaboration.
Rallying around an example allows the team to start ideating effectively by cutting through complexity. The idea is to get everyone collaborating and focused on a particular outcome rather than a specific process or feature.
The practice of working with a variety of examples creates valuable perspective shifts as design problems are framed in different ways. The result allows a team to solve for a stable outcome.
Application: Once you have an example, confirm with the team that each member is clear and on-board with the example and subsequent design story. This will help clear any reservations early in the design process.
Conclusion
At heart, complex design problems require cutting through ambiguity to a clear a vision for the desired outcome.
When it comes to solving complex problems as a team, examples go a long way in keeping that vision at the center of the team’s work.
