Dear Logic Leap reader, here are the resources for this week’s newsletter. Hope you enjoy:
The Worksheet
1. How does defining the right system boundary affect the design work you do with clients?
In the practice of design, I often invoke Eero Saarinen’s quote “always design a thing in its next larger context …” Too often, we set the systems boundaries too closely around the thing we’re designing.
Opening up provides us with new insights and opportunities. I once ran a hospital design workshop where we played with system boundaries — ranging from a patient room all the way through to the community in which the hospital was to be built. Teams came up with radically different hospital designs according to what perspective they designed from.
2. What specific strategies do you suggest to ensure that the boundary is set correctly to be useful?
I like to play with temporal boundaries — consider a single touchpoint in an experience over the length of the experience, over the life of the product/service. In my hospital systems design work, I often have the clients begin the engagement with a way-finding exercise. They accompany someone unfamiliar with the hospital to some hard-to-find destination.
They are also asked to explore how way-finding happens in non-hospital contexts. This helps them to understand that the building they have learned to navigate over years is not the same building their customers are experiencing, sometimes for the first time.
3. What is the best example (case) you have seen where a company redesigned their service/system boundary to achieve better results?
Brigham and Women’s created a wonderful pre-surgery experience that began in the referring physician’s office, where patients received a “map” of the surgery experience, some of the major touch-points, a physical map of the hospital, and space for the physician and patient to take notes tailored to their unique experience (like a reminder to bring meds, numbers to call, etc.)