HOLONOMY: the science of interacting parts within wholes.
Holos = Whole.
On = Part.
Nomy = Systematized Knowledge.
The Study or Science of Wholeness.
The balance between Self-Assertion and Integration.
A strategy called “design thinking” has helped numerous entrepreneurs and engineers develop successful new products and businesses. But can design thinking help you create healthful habits?
Bernard Roth, a prominent Stanford engineering professor, says that design thinking can help everyone form the kind of lifelong habits that solve problems, achieve goals and help make our lives better.
“We are all capable of reinvention,” says Dr. Roth, a founder of the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford and author of the book, “The Achievement Habit.”
I’ve applied design thinking to my own life the past few months, and it seems to be working. I’ve lost 25 pounds, reconnected with close friends and refocused my energy on specific goals and habits.
Design thinking has helped me identify the obstacles that were stopping me from achieving my goals, and it’s helped me reframe my problems to make them easier to solve.
In the words of Dr. Roth, design thinking helped me “get unstuck.”
To get started, design thinkers focus on five steps, but the first two are the most important. Step 1 is to “empathize” — learn what the real issues are that need to be solved. Next, “define the problem” — a surprisingly tough task. The third step is to “ideate” — brainstorm, make lists, write down ideas and generate possible solutions. Step 4 is to build a prototype or create a plan. The final step is to test the idea and seek feedback from others.
Design thinking is normally applied by people who are trying to create a new product or solve a social problem or meet a consumer need.
For instance, Stanford students went to Myanmar to work on an irrigation project. The first two steps of design thinking — empathize and define the problem — meant that the students spent time with the farmers to understand their problems with watering crops.
In doing so, they discovered that the farmers’ real problem was not irrigation but light. The farmers used candles or kerosene lanterns, and the fumes filled their small huts. Managing their needs for light without electric power consumed a great deal of time and income.
As a result, the design-thinking students used empathy to shift their focus to the actual problem that needed solving. They developed affordable, solar-powered LED task lights. They have since provided millions of lights to 42 countries, creating an affordable lighting solution in parts of the world that don’t have electricity, or have spotty service.
Dr. Roth says the same type of thinking that solved the lighting problem for the poor farmers can be applied inward. To start, think about the problem you want to solve. Then ask yourself, “What would it do for me if I solved this problem?”
One example Dr. Roth uses is a person who wants to find a life partner. Ask yourself, “What would finding a partner or spouse do for me?” One answer might be that it would bring you companionship. The next step is to reframe the problem: “How can I find companionship?” There are more and easier answers to the new question — you can meet friends online, take classes, join a club, take a group trip, join a running group, get a pet and spend time at the dog park.
“Finding a spouse now becomes simply one of many possible ways to find companionship,” Dr. Roth says. “By changing the question, I have altered my point of view and dramatically expanded the number of possible solutions.”
For years, I would have told you that my biggest problem was being overweight, but I simply could not find a diet that worked. But design thinking helped me reframe my problem.
It happened a few months ago when I declined an invitation to a party with many of my favorite people who I hadn’t seen in years. I didn’t go because I was embarrassed by my weight, and I just didn’t feel up to seeing people who knew me when I was thinner. I realized that my issues with my weight were getting in the way of me living my life.
It was time for design thinking. At this point, a design thinker would ask “What would losing weight really do for you?”
The answer surprised me. I wanted to feel better about myself, feel less tired and have more energy and confidence to socialize and reconnect with friends. Conducting my own personal empathy exercise helped me realize that weight loss was really not my problem. Instead, I needed to focus on my friendships, on boosting my energy and getting better sleep.
So reconnecting with friends and getting better sleep became my focus. I bought new clothes,
which made it easier to make social plans.
What the Heck is Design Thinking Anyway?
or How to Creatively and Consistently Solve Any Challenge Set Before You
If we define design as the decisions that determine how something works,
Design = Decisions
then Design Thinking is simply the process to make more thoughtful decisions.
Design Thinking = Thoughtful Decisions
Too often, we aren’t even aware there are decisions to be made, or that we have options besides the default on offer.
The
truth is, though — every day, in life and in work — you have a dizzying
array of opportunities to make more intentional decisions that could
result in more desirable outcomes.
Then why don’t we take advantage of this all-you-can-eat design buffet? Because there are too many opportunities.
How do we know which ones to take advantage of?
And even if we could figure that out, how exactly do we take advantage of them?
CUT TO: Design Thinking shyly raising its hand. 👋
Over
the years, this thought process has grown beyond its roots, primarily
in product design, to be applied universally to solve any problem
creatively — big, small, and seemingly impossible.
It’s as close to a human superpower as we have.
Seriously.
If science is how we make sense of our world, design is the way we impact it.
With Design Thinking you have the power to consistently harness creativity and make it your bitch.
Many
of us don’t believe creativity can be harnessed like other, more
earthly processes. Maybe that’s because until very recently in human
history, we haven’t had a creative-problem solving process that could be
as universally and consistently applied to do so.
Plus,
it’s much more fun to believe in a fickle and elusive muse who visits
only a select few, very special people in each lifetime.
When it comes down to it, creativity is simply the act of creating. Even if the thing you create exists only in your mind.
We can get paralyzed thinking that expressing creativity has to mean creating something that’s never existed before, EVER!
But that’s impossible. We cannot imagine the unimaginable.
Go ahead and try. We’ll wait.
(And no cheating by using our world’s laws of physics or any chemical element found in this universe!)
When
I was a kid, I spent a whole afternoon trying to draw what a real alien
would look like if it didn’t look like anything I’d ever seen before.
The best I came up with that day was putting boobs where the arms should
go.
And then many years later, I saw this Stanley Kubrick quote at LACMA and was like, “Yes!”
“…it soon became apparent that you cannot imagine the unimaginable.” — Stanley Kubrick
We can only knit together what we already know in new ways to get to the something that’s never existed before.
Then, only in hindsight, can we look back and see that, nope, we never could have imagined the solution at the start.
And that’s what Design Thinking offers — a way to get where you’re going when you don’t know where that is.
So, what is the process of Design Thinking exactly?
Like anything, there’s complexity and layers of nuance to discover, but it can be pretty much summed up in four phases.
The 4 Phases of Design Thinking
1) Getting Focused:
This is all about identifying constraints, and framing your challenge
around the right questions (which probably aren’t the same questions
you’ve been knocking your head against forever).
Less like: How can we stop drinking so much wine in front of the TV every night, OMG, we’re such losers!?
More like: How might we design activities at home that help us feel rewarded after a hard day of work?
A
famous example of looking to an analogous situation is the redesign of a
hospital operating room that looked to a NASCAR pit crew for insights.
2) Getting Inspired:
This is all about letting your curiosity guide you, and gaining empathy
for the people you’re designing for (which could also be yourself).
Become a detective of the world outside your own. You’re looking for
clues about new ways of thinking and doing.
Talk
to experts, people with extreme behaviors related to your challenge,
and analogous situations that might provide unexpected answers. Go
crazy, think broadly, have fun with it, be a little weird. This isn’t
about finding the right answer. It’s about shaking things up and
collecting a swirl of many potential answers.
3) Getting Scrappy:
This is all about finding the patterns in your inspiration research,
generating a whole lot of wild ideas, and creating lo-fi prototypes.
4) Getting Smarter:
This is all about sharing your ideas with the people you’re designing
for early and often, and testing and iterating your way towards a
successful solution.
It
helps when you’re just getting started to use these like you would
training wheels, and to surround yourself with people who can do this
kind of work in their sleep. But once you get practiced at it, you
really don’t need to work through all the phases all the time, or do
them in any particular order.
In fact, approaching the world through a designer’s lens becomes more of a mindset — one that is centered around:
· Curiosity: to
seek out and see the world in new ways, especially through the eyes of
other people. Empathy is an especially powerful tool, used in
combination with your own design instincts.
· Optimism:
to feel like every challenge is an opportunity for improvement, and
that people (including you!) have the capacity to identify and solve
seemingly impossible problems.
· Collaboration:
to surround yourself with people whose brains and skills are different
than yours so that you incorporate new perspectives and can get further
faster, together.
One
word of caution, like with all superpowers, you’ll sometimes resent
experiencing the world with this newfound hyper-sensitivity.
Like
when you’re at the airport at a United gate and everyone is asking
everyone else if they’re standing in line 2 or 3 or what group is
boarding, and people are bunched up against the moving sidewalk barriers
and nobody walking by can get through and you’re like, “You can design
this process to actually function if you wanted to, stupid f*cking
United!”
By
the way, that’s a good distinction to make: optimism doesn’t mean being
cloyingly rose-colored. It just means you believe there’s room for
improvement. And being design-minded just means you have the creative
confidence that you are one of those people who can improve it.
I’m definitely optimistic that you can!
I’m also curious to hear what design challenges you’re interested in solving.
Share them here, and who knows, maybe there are others reading this that would be great collaborators on your new project.
If you want to experiment with applying design thinking to your own life, listen and subscribe to the Results May Vary podcast.
And
if you enjoyed this article, please tap the heart below and share with
someone you think would enjoy designing their lives more mindfully.
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