Monday, May 16, 2016

Henry Ford and Design Thinking



Henry Ford pioneered many of the ideas that are now commonplace in business, including ideas used in Design Thinking. He has been quoted as saying "If you ask people what they want, it would be a faster horse." This hits on the design thinking principle of divergence. You need to understand what problem you are solving before coming up with a solution. Henry Ford wasn't solving a problem around horses, he was solving a transportation problem.

I was in a design thinking workshop and we did an exercise where first we were asked to draw a door bell. Then we were given a problem in a different framing, we were asked to draw a way to know if someone was at the door. The second set of drawings were much different. A doorbell would have worked, but by reframing the question, many other solutions came out.

Another Henry Ford quote is "you can have any color, as long as it's black." On the surface, this might not sound very customer friendly, However, this response was due to the solution to another problem. When he was developing the production line for the Model T, he was challenged in the painting step. He found all paint colors took to long to dry, except black. By only offering black, he was actually fixing a bottle knock in his process...applying the theory of constraints as it were.

Next time you're working on a solution to a problem, spend a few minutes and think about the framing of the question. Can you change the question in order to expand you possible solutions?

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