Is Process Hurting Innovation?
This morning I had a two hour Skype conversation with the President of FatDUX in Copenhagen Denmark, Eric Reiss. I first saw Eric present at the 2008 IA Summit, in Miami.
The night before he handed out hundreds of small rubber ducks to attendees. The next day when people saw a poor user experience he insisted that people throw the ducks at the big screen where his slides were displayed, as a sign of disgust! It was one of the most memorable presentations I’ve seen in years.
At the end of this year’s IA Summit in Memphis, Eric and I had a passionate conversation about the current state of the user experience communities (IA, UX, IxD, HCI). We continued our discussion this morning focusing on solutions rather than the circular, and I might add completely useless, online discussions about defining each discipline.
In our chat I noted a quote from The Social Life of Information by John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid:
Did the focus on process, perhaps overlook the increasing demand for knowledge in modern organizations? We suspect it did. Consequently, looking at reengineering in the light of knowledge…may help reveal both the strengths (often hidden behind catcalls) and the weaknesses (equally hidden behind cheerleading) of reengineering.
Process is about following a set of steps to get to a specific end state. In order to learn how to do anything we begin by engaging other subject matter experts (books, blogs, conference presentations, podcasts, tweets, lectures, etc) and learn from their years of experience.
After we’ve tapped into everything they have to offer, what’s next? Many professionals lock themselves into a process they understand and subsequently turn away from other disciplines from which they could learn.
The only way to truly think outside the box, is to step away from what you think you know to be the best process and learn about how others approach problems, and in turn, create solutions.
As Eric noted at this year’s IA Summit, ROI: Speaking the Language of Business, the greatest leaders in politics, religion, and science all have one thing in common: they were/are brilliant communicators. Gandhi, Mother Theresa, J.F.K., Obama, and Einstein all had/have the capacity to communicate complex ideas to anyone in a context they understand.
My recommendation to the UX community is to stop debating about a specific process to a specific problem and begin to focus on the clients for whom we are helping. Provide them with greater context to the solutions we offer by providing solutions based on their mental model – not yours.
Quoting again from the Social Life of Information:
…is the current approach to technology design leading in the right direction, or may it again be focusing too tightly on an idealized view of information and how it – and individuals – work?
You might also be interested in the literature on innovation like Bart Nooteboom’s “Learning and Innovation in Organizations and Economies” To summarize (badly perhaps) his “Cycle of discovery” includes periods of experimentation then application of the efficiencies of a resulting generalizations and process and then cycling back towards experimentation and discovery. http://bit.ly/RfSSz
Interesting how they found inspiration for the framework from the work of Jean Piaget, and I can see why. Piaget outlined four stages of child development including Sensorimotor, Peroperational, Concrete, and Formal. Each of which could be used as a metaphor in how we cycle through experiences to learn and subsequently innovate as adults.
I think what they are describing in the link you provided is a paradigm shift. The experiences in our life determine our perspective. That perspective in turn shapes our individual reality (the way we perceive the world, approach problems, etc).
As adults we learn best if we can experience the lesson first hand and if the information being presented is of immediate value.
Another work you might be interested in is that of Adult Learning theorist David A. Kolb http://www.infed.org/biblio/b-explrn.htm
Regardless of the theory, I think all UX professionals should take time to study the basics of cognitive and behavioral psychology. Through a better understanding of how / why people learn we can create better solutions for all.
I think you are absolutely right. Nooteboom gave a talk about this subject at a conference about economics and embodied cognition where they brought together the ideas of John Dewey, Hayek (his “Sensory Order”) with economists and cognitive theorists like Gerald Edelman. They were primarily interested at the time in behavioral economic theories but this domain of thought has profound implications for interactive design.
Thanks for the recommendation, I look forward to following up on that!
My pleasure. Another blog post I wrote a while back may be of interest
http://jeffparks.ca/index.php/findability/this-is-your-brain-on-coke/
Links to information on Epigenetics as well as my conversation at the MX conference put on by Adaptive Path with Björn Harttman who is a PhD candidate in Human Computer Interaction at Stanford University and Editor-in-Chief of Ambidextrous magazine provided.
Cheers,
Jeff