ldrs x design

Reading through the “Systemics” chapter of The Design Way reminded me of one of my favorite books - Antoine de Saint Exupéry’s The Little Prince. One of the overarching themes of The Little Prince is the contrast between the ability that children posses to be creative and holistic in their approach to the world - seeing the bigger picture that adults fail to (“the whole”), due to their close-minded focus on the day-to-day logistics (“the parts”) of life and career. 

Design, as Nelson & Stolterman state in The Design Way, is “a process of meaning making, because it is engaged in creation from a systems perspective, holistically and compositionally.” This process of applying analog context to concepts, and giving them meaning through relationships in context, is the way that designers are able to see the world as a “bigger picture,” and create solutions that those hyper-focused on the parts, rather than the whole, are unable to form.

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“’Meaning making’ in human experience is dependent on being contained within the analog context. Things make sense only when connected and interrelated. 

Meaning is only attributed to that which is understood through relationships in context. 

This is what a systems perspective does for design. Design is a process of meaning making because it is engaged in creation from a systems perspective, holistically and compositionally.”

What it means to become a design leader

Source: https://www.designbetter.co/design-leadership-handbook/becoming-a-design-leader

“The transition to a leadership role is hard for many designers because their love of craft runs deep—leading design means less designing. As a leader, you’ll spend most of your time managing the team. That doesn’t mean you’re no longer a designer; it just means someone else will be implementing the design. Your new position is an opportunity to provide vision and guidance.

You’re no longer just playing an instrument. Now, you’re conducting the orchestra.

As a designer, you’re accustomed to thinking carefully about the customer experience, a skill that will also come in handy as you lead your team. You’ll be designing an environment and structure that brings out your employees’ best work to serve both the company and its users.”

I find that an obvious (yet incredibly useful) design leadership tool is a visual diary/sketching - as a visual learner, I love the idea of drawing out simple sketches of a concept in the early stages of prototyping. For me, this is the fastest and most effective way to play around with an idea and develop it into a more robust concept.

While researching sketch/visual diaries focused on prototyping, I found a couple of apps that could be incredibly helpful for others who like to use sketches as a design leadership tool - Blueprint and Appseed allow users to easily transform sketches into interactive, digital prototypes. This seems like an easy and efficient way to prototype mobile apps and UX designs, particularly for folks that may be less experienced in the Adobe suite.

A (tangible) design leadership tool that I would be interested in exploring is Principle - a UX-design prototyping program that allows users to easily design and animate interactive user interfaces. As my product concept is a mobile app, I feel this tool would be particularly helpful to create a human-centered design. Static mock-ups of websites and apps are fine, but tools like Principle can help a design leader to better conceptualize and test the human-centeredness of their design, as it allows the designer to truly evaluate the experience of interacting with a website or app. 

How can we get people in need to seek mental health services and support? 

For my ethnographic research, I was only able to conduct in-person interviews with a small handful of (five) personal friends and family. This was not particularly surprising, as the audience in question - those who may need mental health support, but are unable/unwilling to seek it - is expected to be naturally reticent about discussing the issue, or even self-identifying as part of this audience.

Given the sensitivity of the topic, I did not take any photos of interview subjects for their privacy. To get a better sample size, I sought YouTube videos of members of this audience who had previously feared seeking help for their mental illnesses, and later opened up about this experience in hopes of helping others. One thing that I found to be interesting was that my personal interviews included two males; however, it was rather difficult to find videos or blogs of males discussing this issue online.

I generally found that the in-person interviews were extremely helpful, however, it was difficult to find any subjects that I did not know personally (again, given the nature of the topic). Broadening the research to subjects that openly discuss the topic online via video or blog posts was extremely helpful in expanding the topic to those outside of my personal contacts. 

The result is a “helping” solution that generally accomplishes its goal of getting homeless people off of the streets an into a shelter - however, it disregards some of the fundamental human needs of the demographic in favor of saving money - the standard homeless shelters often look more prison than home, and prescribe very strict rules that make it difficult for inhabitants to feel comfortable and at home.

The Aibi auto-injector is a re-designed auto-injector specifically for kids. The creator recognized that typical Epipens, designed for adult use, were difficult for children to operate as the amount of force/pressure needed to use the device was more tailored to the strength of a typical adult. 

Aibi takes protection of kids with allergies to the next level by implementing a system including a wearable device that monitors the child’s histamine levels to detect allergic reactions, and notify their caregivers (e.g., a school nurse) and parents of the danger immediately. 

When it comes to human-centered design, this product is similar to the child-friendly toothbrush example from the Module 2 lectures: its designers recognized the physical challenges that kids could face when using auto-injectors (designed for use by adults) on their own. The designers also recognized the challenges that a busy school system could present - such as prevention of caregivers (e.g., busy teachers) to immediately notice when a child was suffering an allergic reaction, or for children to immediately find and notify a teacher of the situation. 

One product feature that solves for a desideratum and is successfully human-centric is the ability of modern smartphones and tablets to automatically transfer from portrait to landscape mode, based on the position of the phone. This features takes into account the way that phone and tablet users actually interact with their device, making it easy and convenient to, for example, use a phone while lying down. 

This photo is pretty similar to my first post, but I promise that the wicked problem is different! I’ve been working in/adjacent to the pharmaceutical industry for pretty much my entire career, so pharma industry-related issues like the opioid crisis and product packaging jump out to me when thinking of big issues!

I saw a very interesting video on this topic recently: the way that pharmacies label prescription drugs is incredibly convoluted and difficult for the end-user to interpret easily. Information is poorly prioritized, with the pharmacy branding being the most prominent, rather than the user’s name or the name of the drug itself. This can be incredibly confusing at best for those who may have visual impairments – for example, the elderly – and lethal at worse, when prescriptions can be mixed up when multiple people in the same household are reaching for their identical bottles of medication and take the wrong drug in error.

What is essentially poorly-designed package labeling can hugely impact the label’s fitness for use, and have very serious consequences for patients. Why is this a wicked problem? Essentially, it seems like the solution is simple (and this video touches upon a heuristic solution that Target implemented, for a limited time) – improve the hierarchy of information to make the labels clear and easy for patients to read!

I couldn’t find a lot of information as to why pharmacies don’t do this. What it seems to boil down to is a lack of explicit standards and regulatory oversight – each pharmacy is different, and regulations as to what should be on the label are: a) unclear/not explicit; and b) may vary from state-to-sate. 

Additionally, it seems that the labels are designed more to help the pharmacist and enhance the pharmacy’s practice, rather than to provide clear and helpful information to the patient. Competing stakeholders may convolute the problem – each pharmacy may have their own procedures in place, and not want to risk error on their part by changing drug labelling to improve the patient experience. 

Note - my dog’s epilepsy meds are pictured - fortunately he does not have to take opioids :)

The U.S. Opioid Epidemic is a public health emergency – and wicked problem - that our nation currently faces, with tens of thousands dying of drug overdose each year. The root of the problem is tied to the over-prescription of highly-addictive opioid medications, often prescribed for their pain-reducing properties. Many become addicted to opioids after legally taking medications prescribed, for example, following surgery. They may begin to misuse the drugs, eventually becoming so addicted that they will resort to incredibly lethal and illegal forms of opioids.

Netflix popularized streaming entertainment, recognizing that audiences wanted quick and easy access to movies & tv at their fingertips. Streaming has become the default way that our generation consumes media, with many forgoing the traditional cable-TV route altogether. And of course, streaming put video rental giants like Blockbuster completely out of business - talk about disrupting an industry. Netflix, a true design leader, transformed the way that we experience media today.

rip Blockbuster :( 

Nintendo’s game design and product design philosophies have lead to portfolios of consoles and games that truly exhibit design leadership. 

One great example of design leadership in Nintendo’s portfolio is the Nintendo Wii - released in 2005 to compete with products such as the Sony Playstation 3 and Mircosoft Xbox 1, the Wii was able to reach a much broader audience than its competitors by creating a game system that was intuitive, physically-engaging (thanks to motion-sensitive controllers); and social, encouraging users to play with friends and family. 

With the Wii, Nintendo created a product that transformed the way that gamers interacted with a game system - the controllers featured an innovative motion sensor that allows users to, for example, mimic the physical action of swinging a tennis racquet to play a tennis video game. This created an immersive experience for users, and encouraged players to get up and move around the room - an action not usually associated with playing a video game.