Does design really solve a problem?

A colleague of mine was unclear about the value of conducting a little research and design for an existing intervention, the Becoming One project. It seemed excessive, when 4 years of research and design had already gone into this intervention.

Excessive, perhaps, except we were scaling the intervention from 3,300 people to 11 million people.

“What is there to change?” she asked. “It looks and works great already.” She represented the implementer, and was ready to implement.

As the designer, I wasn’t so confident. We didn’t know enough about the other 10,996,000 other people because the 3,300 people were a specific group of people from a rural region in Western Uganda.

The truth is, very few things are perfect. We don’t need to reach perfect either.

In this project, our intervention did work, as proven by a research trial. But when a reason to learn and adjust presents itself (in this case, an assignment to adapt Becoming One for scale), we had a chance to look for the small but mighty tweaks.

What is a small but mighty tweak?

Let me share you one of my favourites as an example. Google did this little wonder on my Pixel 6. One random day, it sent me a notification to update the OS. I did the usual — postpone it. Okay, okay, eventually I got tired of the notifications and updated the system.

Suddenly, the log in screen had changed. It felt different. Easier maybe. But everything looked exactly the same. 9 dots on the screen inviting me to draw my secret line to unlock the phone.

What had changed?

The 9 dots were slightly lower on the screen and slightly closer together. It was SO slight that my eyes didn’t see a difference. However, my hand did.

I no longer had to change my right hand grip to half shift to the outer edge and up, just to log in, risking an inevitable drop. The dots were right there, accessible to my thumb, preventing a potential future of phone-induced arthritis and a cracked screen.

I never noticed the problem. In fact, I only noticed it when it was fixed.

This is the phenomenon when good research and design is carried out.

There are lots of problems in the world. There are big ones that we notice and get frustrated at, like inequality, flooding basements, and raccoons tipping over trash cans.

Then there are small ones we don’t notice because we have created a workaround. Kitchen shelves built too high? Use a step stool. The lock for the door incorrectly aligned? Jiggle the key a bit and jam in the door while locking. The door should be pushed but there’s a handle to pull? Put a sign that says “Push”. (Shoutout to Don Norman for this example!)

In each case, we don’t feel the problem because we adapt to it. That’s the wonder of being a human being. We’re pretty good at adapting to things that aren’t quite perfect.

But the moment we move into a kitchen with accessible shelves, or when we change the door lock for an unlocking experience that is smooth like butter, or when no one gets stuck trying to pull the push door anymore, we realize life is just slightly better this way.

For certain people, (think people who are short, people who are handicapped, or people who can’t read English for the examples above), life is MUCH better this way.

These are the small but mighty tweaks.

What was a small but mighty tweak for Becoming One? Converting illustrated images into real-life photos.

Sure, people were content with the illustrated images. But when we showed versions with real-life photos, the feedback was “So much better — I can relate so much more,” “It makes me want to be like them,” “and “It gives the feeling that this teaching is real and practical. It’s real life.”

And you know what else we heard that had not come up before? “Those illustrated images are like hospital posters.” Oops — definitely not the vibe we were going for.

There’s impact from this.

Not only are we making this intervention intrinsically more desirable for people to sign up (so we don’t spend resources trying to convince people it’s a good program), we’re sparking the motivation to learn and change for the sake of reducing violence between couples.

There are small, invisible problems everywhere — some, that when solved (and not just adapted to), make a mighty difference.

If you notice these problems, I encourage you to go forth and make your life or someone else’s life just slightly better. And if you notice the solutions, thank the designer.

Thank you Google Pixel 6 systems update designer.