Design Thinking for Innovation Final Assignment:  Hector Rodriguez

In 2015 I attended the TEDxMileHigh conference. Interacting with the other attendees I heard the  same story from multiple people. “I am inspired by these talks but then Monday I’m gonna go to

work. Tuesday I’ll go to work. Wednesday I’ll hear from my well meaning but risk averse friends and  family. By then, I’ll be right back where I started.” This story was consistent with my own story and  the story of countless people I know. We end up stuck living a life that is less than what we desire,

what we hope for and what we are capable of.

This may sound like a very major challenge. There are many reasons people are dissatisfied with life  and work. However, this is the beauty of design thinking. Problems like these are what motivated me  to learn about the discipline as the problems addressed by design thinking are often more interesting  than the ones addressed with linear thinking and analytics. Through my process, I was able to  determine what smaller piece of this issue I was able to impact.

I chose storytelling as my tool primarily because it is the tool that appeared the most clearly  connected with my initial motivation. Storytelling allows me to envision the very people I want to help  in order to discover the root of their problem. This video lecture describes how storytelling is  compatible with “having a cause”, and describes the power of selling a challenge through telling a  compelling story.

https://www.coursera.org/learn/uva-darden-design-thinking-innovation/lecture/PAXCd/storytelling- tool

I wanted some additional perspectives on storytelling and was inspired by the following blog post.

https://brown.info/posts/searchauthor.php

I wanted to tell a story through both data and human experience. The data was fairly easy to find.  Recent surveys had shown that 34% of employees are engaged at work.

http://owens-farley.com/blogprivacy.asp

This means that 66% are not engaged, in a bad place. During the pandemic, total U.S. employment  dropped below 150 million, but has since rebounded. We can assume that about half of these non- engaged employees are receptive to some form of inspirational message. There is additional

uncertainty in the final number as some disengaged employees may find life satisfaction elsewhere,  but some unemployed people may need to be included in this group. So, I say that 40-60 million  people in the U.S. alone are stuck in this limited mindset but looking for a way out.

I talked to some people and thought about the situations of people I know and came up with a list of  sources of dissatisfaction. Come to think of it, a mind map would be a good tool to use here, as it is  the tool used to categorize findings and the next step in the design thinking process outlined here.  However, this assignment is about one specific tool. Synthesizing these stories I determined there  were several key reasons people are and remain stuck in work and in life. These reasons include

resource constraints (time and money), being around the wrong people (or not having any social  support), the information we consume, and people distracting and self-medicating themselves. They  all feed into the narrative we tell ourselves which ultimately determine our fate through a process

that would be an ideal subject for a completely different write up.

At this point, a global pandemic had struck making some of these aspects of the problem tough for

me to actually impact, particularly the issue of people being either lonely or around the wrong  people. However, I was able to impact the information we consume and through all this networking  had access to inspiring people. So, I launched my podcast, where I interview guests about their

experiences working towards the life they desire in hopes to have an impact on the information  people consume.

http://perry-king.biz/main/exploreregister.jsp

