The use of IT has nothing to do with the value it adds – James Hereford
I recently wrote a paper on change management and a lecture by James Hereford, who was the executive level person responsible for the implementation of digital medical records and tools within Group Health. He spoke openly about the process and some of the points really stuck in my head. Phrased differently it could read:
The implementation of a solution has nothing to do with the problem it solves.
Because it’s not about the solution.
It’s about people.
As designers and developers we are taught how to make things. We ask ourselves what process of design we should follow and how we can make it usable. Some of us are good at the technical side of things where nuts and bolts are put together and others are the type that think in visuals. Together designers and developers can create beautifully functional and practical artifacts. But will it actually be used?
Something that is immensely harder than creating an artifact for use is to get the intended audience to actually use it. And of course the question is if there should be a difference. This is the core of James Hereford’s talk (2010), implementing technology is not enough, you need to get people to successfully use it and that starts with having them believe it is useful. The artifact itself might be designed perfectly but without the intended audience seeing it’s potential is like baking a delicious cake when everyone is full. And they wont eat no matter how good it tastes.
The thing that stuck the most with me though was this:
Sell the problem, not the solution – James Hereford
This is the answer. It is harder to get people onboard with a product than it is to have them agree to a problem and the fact that it needs to be addressed. Instead of it becoming a conversation that sounds something like “we want to sell you this”. If it all revolves around a real problem and going into action to solve that problem we will see different results in people’s reactions. Because ultimately it is not a product’s potential to do things that sounds useful but clearly stating why there is an issue and then painting the picture how to get there and what will be the best tangible way to do it. And why addresses the problem.
Sketching
To this end I tried to capture it more visually and I want to start showing people a little more of what my process looks like. The sketches are all created on a Wacom Bamboo tablet. I started out with some rough sketching where to goal was to play around with the definitions and try to find what came closest to the core of selling the problem.
I started out with rough sketch of trying to correlate the people with the problem and then with the product.
But something was missing and I did not want a link between the “people” and the “product” without it first passing the “problem” and so I created this next version.
(left) The layout here was not to my satisfaction since the horizontal view made it hard not to resize the image very tiny when on a Letter sized paper. In creating the next version I wanted also to better define the links between the three elements since I felt it did not really come as close as I wanted to.
(right) Ultimately I liked the way it was done but want to use more iconic images to trigger the mind and ended up with this last sketch that actually is what was put into the paper.
