by David S. Cortright
There has been a lot of talk about “design thinking” in the press over the last few years. Design thinking is literally thinking like a designer. Designers keenly observe the world around them, identify users who have unmet needs, and design solutions that fulfill the needs for those users.
I saw the movie March of the Penguins about a year ago. It’s a great documentary that follows the yearly cycle of reproduction for emperor penguins in Antarctica. The penguins make a long trek inland, pair up, and mate. After the female lays her egg, the male guard the egg and keeps it warm for four months with no food or water, in near total darkness, at bitter cold temperatures, huddling together with other males to keep warm, all the while balancing his egg on their feet and keeping it warm and protected under his belly. Meanwhile the female reverses the trek back to the ocean to stock up on food for her family while doing her best not to get eaten by a leopard seal, and then walks back to her mate to relieve him of the now-hatched chick, both of whom are extremely hungry.
And the whole time, while I’m marveling at this amazing and beautiful process of nature, in the back of my mind I’m thinking, “these penguins have a lot of unmet needs.” They are hungry, cold, and tired; they need to keep their egg safe, gather food for their chick, and meet up with their mate again after an extended separation. So many unmet needs, out of which fall so many possible solutions.
There could be penguin shelters for getting out of the cold and wind; penguin egg incubators, where you could check in your egg and have the service keep it warm and safe; penguin snack stands for taking the edge off those 4-month-long hunger pangs; a penguin communication service to keep in touch with your mate while separated (which of course would alert the male if the female gets eaten, and alert the female if the male loses the egg). This is a vast, untapped market.
Now if only penguins had money…
David S. Cortright is a veteran Bay Area interaction designer. He was at Yahoo! when he wrote this and is now, as of summer 2008, the proprietor of Rated-Best.org, a list of highest rated products.
You might find a book aboutorganisational change and creativity intriguing… it’s called “Peacock in the Land of Penguins” by B. J. Gallagher Hateley etal.