Johannesburg, 21 Apr 2020
Air travel has become so mundanely reliable, it makes headlines when an aircraft does go down. In 2019, there was one fatality for every 5.58 million flights, according to a report from aviation consultancy To70. How is air travel so safe and reliable? It is the result of considerable skill and engineering.
Now, imagine changing the minds of such skilled people, often the smartest in the room. Consider how impressed they must be to try something new in a world where consistency is king.
Design thinking done right
A development approach informed by 'Design for People' focuses on empathising with the end-user and defining their requirements, instead of quickly jumping to the ideas. It's also known as design thinking.
"Design thinking has everything to do with making something useful," says Eddie Graham, UX Specialist at Nacelle. "It's not only for designers, it is a practical approach to problem-solving."
This concept has been around digital transformation discussions for some time, but remains poorly understood. Stanford University developed design thinking as a process for problem-solving, after studying the behavioural and cognitive processes that lead to something new.
Design thinking is worth studying further, but suffice to say it's been proposed as a revolutionary approach to problem-solving. Of course, talk is cheap. Action speaks volumes – and Nacelle could not have chosen a tougher place to bring this concept to fruition.
Pilot's got a brand new bag
As established earlier, the airline industry has brilliant, accomplished and confident people. These include pilots, who routinely ensure the safety of their cargo and passengers. Pilots traditionally carried a bag onboard, containing maps and technical information useful during their duties. This bag eventually evolved into a digital replacement, the EFB or Electronic Flight Bag.
Even a cursory glance at a typical EFB shows the hallmarks of a very bespoke piece of software, cobbled over time to meet the requirements of pilots and airlines. But it works, so proposing that it can be done better seems like a losing proposition. Yet design thinking has done just this, converting the EFB as part of a platform that provides several different services modules to pilots and airlines.
Building such software relies on modern development methods such as microservices, data consolidation and web services. But the journey was a design thinking experience.
"Design thinking is a way of defining a problem, properly unpacking it and then finding new solutions for it," Graham explained. "And the beauty of it is that it taps into many minds, because they are really the intent behind this. The more diversity you have in a team, and the group and the client, the better the outcome."
People before ideas
Most ambitious change projects fail because they are too idea-focused. The catalysts and momentum for change are in the thoughts and attitudes of the users, which occupy much of the first two phases of Stanford's design thinking methodology. Ideas are only in the third phase, so it's vital not to leap ahead.
"This is one of the big mindset changes that we're trying to drive through businesses," said Nacelle's Chief Digital Officer, Kirsty Barkhuizen. "In the past, design thinking has very much been seen as a fluffy thing. And yet, it's probably one of the most crucial elements."
Design thinking entails engaging customers, paying attention, and developing the thinking process long before any ideas are allowed onto the table. It also means iterated development and keeping it organic by using a squad model that lets different teams focus on individual areas, yet retaining sight of the project's full view.
This approach engaged and won over the smartest people in the room. It improved a very respected but outdated piece of technology, through an evolution guided by its users. And it's a model that can be applied to any other sector or business.
"A lot of enterprises get caught and trapped in thinking that they know their customers, that they know the base, that they know the solutions," said Barkhuizen. "Then internal teams collaborate and construct propositions without any insight from the customers who they believe will find value in the proposition, hoping they will use it. Millions are spent bringing it to life. Often without success. Design thinking takes us away from pleasing the business ego and guides us back to being truly customer led. A term that is much easier said than lived."
Share