Making things Less Complicated

Marc Rettig made a good presentation. It is interesting though, I appreciate the presentation more for the intimacy he created in a crowd of 500 then for the content. I will share some of the content nuggets then move on to the intimate moments ;>

How do you design to make things less complicated? We need to start by getting the team to understand the context. The immersion of the team in the customers world helps make them connect. For many of us true understanding can only occur throught that basic human need to connect. Marc had a couple of salient examples:

  1. healthcare is about the household not the individual – after spending time with people in their homes the team was able to see how important it was for each member of the household to understand and be involved in the patient’s care
  2. technology is about the household and the relationships to navigate the complexity – the team noticed that the insertion of technological devices such as clickers, TVs, VCRs, DVD players, microwaves, phones impacted the relationship of the family members – one family relationship was turned on its head because the mother could not figure out how to use the clicker so she would wait until her son came home so he could turn on the DVD player

Marc’s intimate conversation was about starting his consulting firm and the explorations they went through to define themselves. What was it they wanted to do? Change the world? Impact the most people by their designs? What is the most important thing? What types of jobs would they accept? Reject? What are their inner most desires around what they would like to work on? He was able to weave this into his presentation without sounding like he was promoting his company but rather that he was sharing a bit of himself. Marc’s firm is called Fit Associates.

It makes me think. I work 8-10 hours a day. What do I really want? How do I define that?

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