The interview question that taught me the importance of design thinking
By: Elle Marcus
Tags: Design Thinking, Empathy, Teamwork, Interview Questions, Management And Leadership

My current career is in the field of human-centered design. The roles in this field use the design thinking method to innovate and problem solve. Design thinking involves interviewing and observing users to formulate design decisions based on the user’s needs.

According to Roger Martin, dean of the Rotman School of Management,

“Design Thinking is in a halfway house between analytical thinking: the purely deductive and inductive logical thinking that utilizes quantitative methodologies to come to conclusions, and intuitive thinking: knowing without reasoning.”

Intuitive thinking paired with analytical thinking. After interviewing and observing, you will start to notice patterns emerge from what your users say and do when they use your product. “Most users like to click this button before continuing on to this webpage” or “most users tend to arrange their tools a certain way while working”. As these patterns of user behavior emerge, you need to separate your personal bias from what is appearing in these observations. You may have a preconceived notion of how things should be, and therefore need to take care to not manipulate your data so it follows your beliefs.

In other words, intuition isn’t enough. And this logic applies to management.

It seems straightforward: just don’t be a jerk. Listen to your team. According to Forbes, 66% of employees would leave their job if they didn’t feel appreciated. But while it may seem obvious, even the nicest people may fall short on noticing patterns. I was recently put on a project with a quiet teammate. Every now and then she would give a suggestion, but otherwise she was relatively silent. I noticed after making a suggestion, she would purse her lips and make a quiet mmm. At first, I just moved on and assumed she agreed. But I noticed that once she made that noise and facial expression, she stopped giving suggestions. So I stopped and asked if she had thoughts or disagreed. Yes, in fact she did. And every time, it ended up leading to a better solution. After that, she felt more comfortable bringing up an opposing opinion without being prompted.

Along with noticing patterns, there are a few more skills used in design thinking that can be applied to management and leadership.

One key skill is to be empathetic in order to understand your users.

Being able to take a step back and examine things by how other people see them and not how you would see them is an essential skill in design thinking. An example in Observing the User Experience by Elizabeth Goodman is of a CEO of a digital greeting card company who had his own system of finding the cards he liked. He would search for a specific card, see it appear in the results, and he was set. He asked the development team to focus on improving this system. It turns out, most users didn’t like the streamlined approach of searching for cards and wanted to leisurely browse for cards.

This idea is cultivated because many longtime executives and managers believe they understand the business the best, and therefore design decisions must come from the top. By being empathetic to your user, you will understand how and why your users use your product.

So how can a manager apply this to their own employees? Basically the exact same way: by understanding the reasoning behind their suggestions.

I have a friend who works in a manufacturing plant. Every now and then, one of the lines would go wrong. My friend worked on the shop floor and understood how that line worked. The solution would typically involve shutting down a portion of the line based on the machine diagnostics and repair a mechanical fixture. Usually this problem can be postponed for weeks or months — when the supply chain schedule is lighter and won’t suffer with a line shutdown. His supervisor did not understand the manufacturing line equipment well, but insisted the line be shut down immediately. Since this shutdown occurred regardless of their supply chain schedule, this usually costed days of valuable manufacturing time.

So why shut down immediately? As a manager maybe he’s concerned that the problem could lead to a bigger, more costly problem. However, every time the line shuts down it becomes apparent that the problem could have been postponed to a more convenient time. Not only did he fail to see the patterns of these actions, but he also failed to listen to the employees around him. Employees whom were more knowledgeable about the equipment, and repeatedly insisted that the manufacturing line does not need to be shut down based on their expertise.

To mitigate this, ask yourself: What is your teammate’s basis for their decision? Is more than one teammate saying the same thing? What is the basis for your decision? All decisions must be evidence-based and patterns should not be ignored.

Once the empathetic mindset is adopted, decision making is no longer up to a single person.

Design thinking is a methodology that must involve a team. Once insights are gathered, a plethora of potential solutions must be determined before choosing the best one to continue with. Allowing input from your team will result in a higher probability of diverse ideas.

Not only does this help design the product, but it can also improve the overall strategic thinking of your team. Being forced to come up with many ideas before narrowing down to one can help one be more open-minded.

Furthermore, being open to your team’s suggestions and allowing them to ideate freely can be a more effective way to collaborate and improve company culture. It purposefully allows a time and place to let everyone’s voice be heard. Allowing the team to constantly challenge assumptions can lead to an expansion in creative thinking.

My biggest takeaway from my interview was their company culture was built to have managers be decision makers, and employees were just cogs in the wheel. Not only does that lower morale, but those are extra sets of thinking caps they aren’t using.

It purposefully allows a time and place to let everyone’s voice be heard.

And finally, learning to iterate is an important skill in design thinking that can be applied to management styles.

Iteration means to improve upon a process or a product based on user feedback.

At my previous company, when there was an engineering change, the physical document explaining the change needed to be passed around to every department manager to be signed. If one manager disagreed with a portion of the document, they consulted the engineer and the engineer adjusted it. Then a new document was printed, and the process of walking the document around the building repeated. After the change was signed off, a copy of that physical document was kept on the manufacturing floor. Sometimes the originally document changed, but didn’t require another sign-off — just an email to the manufacturing floor manager describing the change.

That worked when the company only had 20 people. As every department grew, keeping track of these changes became a detail-oriented art. After multiple complaints from every department, the executive level managers agreed there needed to be a new process.

Always keep asking: is this process working? Why or why not?