leadership and design thinking

 

I took this photo in a lift at the MyTown shopping mall in Cheras. What do you notice is odd about this? You might be wondering why is it that when pressed, the buttons for levels 3 and 4 light up in red, but the button for the Ground Floor lights up in green. You would be wrong. That green is not the button being lit up. The button has a bright green border. Also it is slightly protruding. If you press the G button, you will get a red light and it will be a red square within the green square.

This user interface designer has good intentions. The most frequently pressed button is the G, so it was designed to stand out (literally) and to have a green border. This helps users think less and they will more quickly identify the G button among the rest. Unfortunately what happened that day was a group of us got into the lift at Level 5 (car park) and we stood around for a long time wondering why the lift didn't move. All of us thought someone else had pressed the G, because it appeared to be lit up with a green light.

This is why design thinking is important. Good intentions are not enough. They sometimes make things worse. We need to be able to see from the users' perspective, in order to deliver the right solution to them. Leaders with good intentions are not enough. We need to apply design thinking so that good intentions translate to the right results for our people and our organisations.