Innovation - thriving in the realm of uncertainty

Innovation
Thriving in the realm of uncertainty 
Alastair Lee
April 2015

This chap’s name is Daniel Kish.
He’s blind. His eyes wereremoved when he was threeyears old. And yet he managesto ride his bike on the streetsaround his home.
How? By ‘clicking’ with hismouth and sensing the
reverberations off the
environment around him. It’s likesonar. He’s sometimes called the‘real Batman’

… I was amazed by Daniel’s
story when I heard it on the This
American Life podcast.
Daniel is a master of moving
through the world with much
less information than most of us.
A world peppered with
unknowns.
And it occurred to me that when
we innovate, we are stepping
into that same world. Away from
what is known to work into what
might work. And In order to
succeed in this world we need
to be comfortable with
uncertainty, like Daniel is.

@docket
Expectations
Method
Support
1. So I thought it would beworth looking at what hasenabled Daniel to succeed,in the hope that it can shedsome light on what we cando to be happier operating inthe this realm of uncertainty.
For me three key elementsemerged from Daniel’s story.
1. Expectations - unlike other
blind kids Daniel never
expected anything less than to
be able to move freely around
the world
2. Method - Daniel developed
this amazing ability to echo-
locate himself through clicking
3. Support - Daniel’s mother
was amazing. She bought him
his bike, picked him up when
he fell and refused to listen to
those who wanted to limit his
ambitions

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Expectations Method Support
What do you expect?
So lets look at each in the
context of innovation in
product or service design,
starting with expectations…

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Despite qualitative and quantitative
differences between individuals, the
neurobiological principles of creative
behaviour are the same from the least
to the most creative among us
Professor Richard Casselli, Neurobiologist
1. Everyone
can be creativeFirstly, we all have it in us tobe be creative

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When one says of someone that he or
she is 'thinking creatively', one is
commenting on the outcome of the
process, not on the process itself
Robert Weisberg, Cognitive Psychologist
2. It’s not
wizardry
Secondly, the creativeprocess is nothing other thanwork. It’s not wizardry

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Furthermore
• we have the perspective
• we have the skills
• we know what’s possible
3. We’re thechosen ones!
And as designers
we are well placed
to do this.

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Innovation distinguishes
between a leader and a follower
Steve Jobs
If we want to think of
ourselves as a leading
UX consultancy then it’s
our duty to lead

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How?

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flickr.com/photos/
Innovation is like sleep - if you
focus hard on it, it becomes
illusive. Instead you need to
create the conditions for it to
happen naturally

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Design Thinking - IDEO
We need to do what wealways do. Understand theproblem, come up withpotential solutions, test themand iterate

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Research Concept prototype Design
Damien Newman - Central Office of design
Doesn’t matter
which design
process you use. It
could be this
one…

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Discover Define Develop Deliver
Double Diamond - UK Design Council
Or this one…

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I’ve chosenIDEO’s DesignThinking model

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Let’s start
with the
research
phase

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Insight is the raw material of
innovation
Alastair Lee
I am sure I am not
the ﬁrst to say this!
If you want to
create something
new to see the
problem in a
something new in
new way

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James Lang from
cxpartners knows a
thing or two about
research techniques

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James’s
Learn from his advice,
for example on depth
interview techniques

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Think of yourself as a
detective uncovering
the truth about what
makes people do
what they do

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Remain sensitive,
even us old hands
must remain alive to
new insights each
time we engage in
research.

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SensitiveDetectiveFresh eyes
So in
summary…

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SensitiveDetectiveFresh eyes
On to deﬁning
the problem…

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If I were given one hour to save
the planet, I would spend 59
minutes defining the problem
and one minute resolving it
Albert Einstein

@docket
So after we have
collected our data
we need to make
sense of it, in order
to work out where to
focus our attention

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At cxpartners we
often do this with
experience maps

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And we can ﬁnd
ourselves focussed
on a particular
moment in the user
journey, perhaps a
pain-point or
opportunity to gain
competitive
advantage

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Our recent work on this
online supermarket is anexample of that
(conﬁdential)

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Or we can look at
ways to enhance the
experience across a
number of steps
within our control,
perhaps by adding
character to the
experience in small
ways

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(… make me feel)
Steve Krug rightly
asked us not to make
people think… but
there’s nothing wrong
with making people
feel good along the
way

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Mailchimp does a
great job of making a
boring product feel
fun to use

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Slack has character.The concept of
Slackbot adds a
different dimension
and enables a fresh
approach to on-
boarding

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How might we…
Opportunity statement
IDEO’s idea
redesign ice cream to
be more portable?
So once we have
worked out what’s
needed, it’s time
express the problem
in a way that enablescreative solutions.
This is a key momentin the project.
IDEO use
Opportunity
Statements to spur
their designers into
action, and it’s
important to pitch
these at the right
level…

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How might we…
too narrow
create a cone to eat ice cream
from without it dripping?
IDEO’s idea This is too narrow,
too prescriptive. A
cone may not be
the only way…

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How might we…
too broad
redesign dessert?
IDEO’s idea This is too vague.
Where would you
start?

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How might we…
just right
IDEO’s idea
redesign ice cream to
be more portable?
The right level is
broad enough to
enable creative
solutions i.e. not too
prescriptive.
But narrow enough tomake it clear what
the solution should
focus on… in this
case portability

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SensitiveDetective
Opportunity
statement

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SensitiveDetective
Opportunity
statement
Having deﬁned the
problem it’s time to
come up with some
ideas.
This is an area whereUX we can easily falldown. It’s too easy towalk down
conventional paths
and not consider
others. Partly
because we’re often
focussed on usabilityand certain patterns
are familiar to users
and are known to
work, so why changethem?

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Here’s a puzzle: Link
all 9 dots using  
4 straight lines or
fewer, without lifting
the pen and without
tracing the same line
more than once

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1
2
3
4
Here’s the solution.
This puzzle is the
origin of ‘Thinking
outside the box’
because, in order to
solve it, your lines
need to go beyond
the imaginary box we
tend to put around
the dots

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We like these sorts ofsolutions to
problems… like thisclever mouse catcher

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The Hippo watercarrier

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Or the Soccket Ball,that charges as youkick it around andthen provides
electricity

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This one is a littlesilly, but still genius

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Soft focus
So, how de we allow
ourselves to come up
with these new
ideas?
Firstly you need to let your
unconscious mind loose.
Try and get that feeling of
thinking in the shower.Suspend that part of your
brain that’s saying, “just
get on with it and do the
obvious thing”
Go for walks, meditate,think in soft focus.

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Soft focus
Secondly, it pays to beinterested in a range oftopics, industries andideas. Read widely andexplore interesting ideas,
stories, tools andapproaches that you can
‘import’ into your solution
from somewhere else

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Fast and loose
There are different schoolsof thought on brainstorms.IDEO are big fans andbase their whole approachon carefully orchestratedbrainstorming. Theygenerate lots of ideas,with a facilitator helpingthem to jump from onetrain of thought to another.
The important thing is tobring people with differentperspectives together.

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toolbox.hyperisland.com
Workshop
formats

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Work alone… Not on a committee. Not on a team.
Most inventors and engineers
I’ve met are like me — they’re
shy and they live in their heads.
They’re almost like artists. In
fact, the very best of them are
artists. And artists work best
alone
Steve Wozniak, Co founder of Apple Computer
…But there are other
schools of thought, and
other perspectives on
brewing creative ideas…

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Steven Johnson talks
about ‘slow hunches’
being the source of many
major breakthrough’s from
the pendulum clock to the
world wide web

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SensitiveDetective
Soft focus
Share hunchesBrainstorm
Opportunity
statement
I think there is a place for
both - two tracks of
thinking with different
rhythms that can exist in
parallel.

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Soft focus
Share hunchesBrainstorm
SensitiveDetective
Opportunity
statement
Moving on to the laststage in the cycle…

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Tom
Chi
prototyped
Google Glass
Tom Chi gave an amazing
talk at Mind The Product
conference in 2012 about
prototyping google glass

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His team were considering
input mechanisms to
Glass and gestural was an
option.
So he wanted to prototype
a Minority Report - type
experience to see if it
would work.
How long did it take for
him to get it up and
running?

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Tom Chi at Mind the Product 2012 https://vimeo.com/55741515
Within 45 mins he had
built this contraption which
mimicked the interaction.
And through playing with it
they realised that it was
uncomfortable to keep
your arms up high in front
of you for more than a few
minutes.
It didn’t work. So they
moved on

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http://www.slideshare.net/mindtheproduct/tom-chi-rapid-prototyping-at-google-x-mindtheproduct-2012?
They produced 15
prototypes per week in
order to explore different
solutions.
Tom advocates this broad
and shallow approach,
before settling on a
solution. Success is
measured by how fast can
you learn, not how fast
can you make something
that works.
In UX we tend to donarrow and deepprototypes and discountcrazy ideas to early.Particularly in the agencyenvironment where wedon’t want to be seen to‘muck about with sillyideas’ that may gonowhere

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Soft focus
HunchesBrainstorm
SensitiveDetective
Maximise learning
Broad + fast
Constellate
Opportunity
statement

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What do we need?
So Daniel had is mother
ﬁghting off the neigh-
sayers. What do we need
in terms of support?

@docket@docket
Firstly, we need the bike -
i.e the means to do the
work.
We need the space, the
tools and a culture that
values experimentation
and learning.
We also need a little time
to pursue and discuss
those ‘Slow hunches’

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Clients
We need clients that can
be persuaded to try new
things. There are lots of
these, they will just need
reassurance, which is
where prototyping helps.

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Projects
E
X
P
E
R
I
M
E
N
T
We need projects that
don’t prescribe the
solution, but offer the right
Opportunity Statement.
And project structures that
allow for experimentation.
(and yes I know this is
waterfall)

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Expectations
Method
Support
So, with the right
expectations of what we’re
capable of.
The appropriate method
and skills
And the right culture and
support within our
organisation…

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We too can do
amazing things

@docket
Thanks
@docket
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Innovation - thriving in the realm of uncertainty

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