How to solve problems holistically, without battling over methodologies!

How many times have you solved a problem, only to find out that it broke something else?

How many times have you designed a solution that looked amazing on paper, but failed to be adopted?

I’ve seen quite a lot of those! I tend to think that when that happens, it’s because we, as designers, failed to see something. The more complex the problem, the greater the chances that we’ll miss something. The good news is that there is a way to reduce this risk!

In this blog post, I want to share two things with you:

1. Why taking a holistic approach and being flexible in how you approach methodologies can make or break your chances of designing an impactful solution that sticks.
2. What the keys things are into blending together Human Centred Design and process improvement to really understand the systemic problems you may be trying to solve, and not fall into a methodologies battle.

Taking a holistic approach to problem solving means looking at it from various angles and through various lenses – while also removing biases. This is key because when we only look at one side or layer of the problem, we’re definitely missing things that contribute to that problem.

On one hand, when we only take Human Centred Design, and look at the customer’s experience, we are missing what the internal processes are that can be causing some pain points, or we may not understand that a political or strategic decision has been made that’s impacting how systems have been set up.

On the contrary, if we only look at processes and don’t dive deep into emotions, needs, and motivations – we might be missing the one element that will prevent our users from adopting the solution we’re proposing.

When we blend Human Centred Design with process improvement methodologies, we can take the best out of each, using the different elements of each when we need them and creating synergies that increment the value we’re delivering to our clients or stakeholders. We can look at the whole system and paint a full picture of the situation.

So how do we make this happen?

1. Start with the human experience: understanding the current state from each stakeholders’ perspective is essential.

For example, at a project we ran with one of our aged care clients last year, we were looking at the customer journey from customer awareness of the aged care provider all the way to moving into a residency. We started that process by interviewing customers, administrative staff, residence management staff, as well as the support areas such as marketing, customer service, and sales. From that, we got a clear picture of what was happening at a human level, what their pain points, delight points, and ways of thinking were.

2. Understand the processes that are underpinning the experience: After you have conducted interviews, it’s time to map the processes (what really happens, not what ‘should’ be happening). You can conduct workshops where different teams explain their ways of working and workarounds, as well as their pain points and delight points in relation to those processes and systems.

If we go back to the aged care example, we conducted workshops with the customer service team, as well as the sales and residence management staff to understand their individual processes and handover points. We discovered the siloes and frustrations that we could quickly link to the broken customer experience we previously mapped through the interviews.

3. Synthesise in collaboration: To understand the problem in its entirety, we need to synthesise insights as a collaborative team, so you may want to get your entire team in the same room (even if it’s virtual) and share their learnings and aha moments from interviews and workshops. Map your customer experience and process map together to draw the connection between symptoms and causes. Also look into the environment and whole ecosystem – what’s the culture like? What are the behaviours and other things that may be impacting the processes and experience?

Going back to the example, once we finished the interviews and process maps, we came together to draw those connections and be able to tell the story to our stakeholders so that then we could prioritise the main areas for improvement. We conducted a prioritisation workshop, that set us up for the next phase… design!

4. Design for implementation and continuous improvement: Once you have identified the problems and its causes, you can jump into designing for the future. This, again, can be done by drawing from different tools and methodologies, and in collaboration to design the future state in a holistic way. Start from the future experience, and then design the processes that your people and technology will need to follow to support and enable that customer experience.

Going back to the aged care example again, we co-designed with the teams – in a series of workshops where we looked at the experience, the processes and the systems, as well as the skills that were required to deliver such experiences in each step. We did this in a combined workshop where we used a variety of tools and exercises from HCD to process improvement. At the end of the day, the key to these mixed workshops is that we design the logic behind each activity to be easily linked to the experience that we want to create, and in that way the workshop participants don’t really care what methodology you’re using, they can see the purpose!

Before we finish off, here are some tips to set your team up for success!

• One team – one project: Set up your projects to look at the different angles of a systemic problem simultaneously – not as parallel projects, but as ONE unified multidisciplinary team that comes together to shared insights and build upon each other
• Needs over methodologies: Create a shared toolkit, it doesn’t matter what tool belongs or methodologies, we need to look at the needs that we have at each point of the project and choose the tool that will best serve us.
• Adapt your approach to the problem you’re solving: At Three6, we have an approach that we follow to solve problems, but no two projects look the same – and that’s because each problem needs its own approach to being understood and solved. So take this approach and make it your own every time you’re solving a problem.
• Learn from each other: Finding the right balance of knowledge / comfort zone and learning for each team member is key to maintaining the growth of the team, but also to ensure that we are bringing our own knowledge in. And staying open to learning and nurturing each other, with a beginner’s mindset – rather than protecting our own expertise is key. (Full disclosure: egos need to be put aside for this to be successful!)

So… are you ready to take a holistic approach to the next systemic problem you need to solve?

Remember, at Three6 we love solving problems, and we’re only a call away from helping you through the journey!

Let’s chat: hello@three6.com.au | Catalina@three6.com.au