Zoë Rose ‘Design Through Time: Unraveling the Evolution of Methodologies and Frameworks’

[00:00:00] Zoe Rose : It actually gets really interesting because most of the work that went into apply creativity after this. What the academics were really trying to do was, and they were largely academics, they were trying to establish repeatable processes. So in science, one of the things that defines the scientific process is that if you do it a second time, you'll get the same results.

[00:00:25] Zoe Rose : So reproducibility. Yeah. And they were trying to do the same thing. And you get a lot of quite. Dense, thick, voluminous academic publications going through this and they don't quite get it. They don't get getting, they don't quite get it. They don't get quite get it.

[00:00:42] Gerry Scullion: Hello and welcome to Bringing Design Closer On. This is eight c d. My name is Jerry Scalian. I'm the founder of, this is eight cd. I'm a designer educator, design coach. And podcaster, obviously based in the wonderful city of Dublin, Ireland. Now our goal here is to have conversations and inspire and help move the dial forward for [00:01:00] organizations to become more human-centered in their approach to solving complex business and societal problems.

[00:01:05] Gerry Scullion: Now in this conversation, I caught up at Zoe Rose of great question in Canberra. Zoe's based in, um, Canberra, the capital of Australia. As we all know, we speak about the background and history of design methods, and we go as far back as 1950. Zoe is a well of information on this topic and proves to be a really fun and enjoyable exploration back in time.

[00:01:26] Gerry Scullion: I know you're gonna really enjoy it. So let's get straight into it. Zoe Rose, I am delighted to finally have you on the podcast. We'd be messaging probably close to a year, a year and a bit for, um, you know, trying to work out a time and a schedule. For our listeners who aren't aware of Zoe Rose, maybe introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what you do.

[00:01:50] Zoe Rose : Hi, Jerry. How are you? Uh, I am a UX designer based in Canberra in Australia. A little while ago, I [00:02:00] shifted gears on my career to focus more on a. Trying to get the next generations of designers up and running by turning my mind to workplace learning and design education that has recently taken me into a master's by research at University of Technology Sydney, where I'm looking at design capability frameworks, specifically in the Australian public Service.

[00:02:26] Zoe Rose : And I have a range of really specific and annoying hobbies.

[00:02:31] Gerry Scullion: Yeah, go on. I can't leave you hanging on that. You have to tell me what they're

[00:02:37] Zoe Rose : All right. No, it's oddly wide and oddly specific. Yeah, I do big bubbles. You know those big bubbles. Yeah, I do.

[00:02:44] Gerry Scullion: My kids

[00:02:44] Zoe Rose : love that. Yeah. Yep. I've been perfecting my, my own personal bu bubble recipe for the local climate for the last couple of years.

[00:02:51] Zoe Rose : Uh, I cook a lot of regional Chinese food. Um, yeah. Well, you can't just say, You cook [00:03:00] Chinese food because anyone who knows anything will just say, wow, but what region? So, uh, several. But my, my focus at the moment is Hunan because it's relatively less sophisticated in terms of, than some other areas.

[00:03:14] Gerry Scullion: So, Yeah.

[00:03:15] Gerry Scullion: Like, just, just on that point, like, you know, with Chinese food, there's obviously lots of, um, you know, different techniques and different methods mm-hmm. That go into producing, uh, the cu the cuisine. So we're gonna talk a little bit more around your interest in. Multiple methods and also the origins of these things.

[00:03:37] Gerry Scullion: I just saw, I saw a segue there and I was gonna jump straight on it. I could see a parallel between your interest in Chinese food and design methodologies. Tell me where that interest came from.

[00:03:47] Zoe Rose : The interest in design methodologies? Yeah. Oh, I think it's the, the designer's hunter instinct, um, where you wanna understand it and you wanna understand it and you wanna [00:04:00] understand it and you wanna understand it, and eventually that's gonna take you backwards.

[00:04:05] Gerry Scullion: Yeah. Well, a lot of people that I'm, um, kind of learning, uh, especially kind of. Emerging talent is probably a safer, um, way of describing it. They, they seem to, um, have a, maybe it's an academic thing, they don't really go back in time to really understand the origins of where things came from and understanding, you know, what they were trying to achieve by these different methods.

[00:04:32] Gerry Scullion: So how far back have you gone in your research, in the historical kind of, uh, backgrounds in, in design methods?

[00:04:43] Zoe Rose : All right. I have two answers to that. One of them is a really good punchline, so I'm gonna hold it over.

[00:04:50] Gerry Scullion: I never, I never say no to a punchline.

[00:04:52] Zoe Rose : Okay, so in terms of. How far back do we go where it's a sensible place to start?

[00:04:59] Zoe Rose : Yeah, [00:05:00] I think so. In terms of creative thinking methodologies, a sensible place to start is the 1950s, but more specifically the 1950s in America, because what was happening in the nine? Yeah. So what was happening in the 1950s in America? Was you had a surge of interest in trying to document and systematize creative thinking, and you had that coming up for a really specific reason, which is that for a little bit of the time there, it was starting to look like the U S S R was gonna win the Cold War.

[00:05:38] Gerry Scullion: What about going even further back? Cuz I remember when I used to mm-hmm. Do work for the RSA in, in London and I'd, I held several events in, in Australia. Mm-hmm. And we had fantastic speakers from uts actually about indigenous engineering. Mm-hmm. And cause you're from Australia, have, have you managed to go further back, like in time [00:06:00] rather than, um, I guess the white perspective of like, it began in the fifties and the industrial, kind of the production age, um, has, has there been any ex exploration down to the indigenous, uh, methods that they used way back, um, before the white man?

[00:06:20] Gerry Scullion: Took over their country. So

[00:06:22] Zoe Rose : I'd be less inclined to think about indigenous creative problem solving as being historical. Okay. Because, uh, indigenous Australia is the oldest living culture on earth. Yeah. So to regard that through the lens exclusively of history would be to not see a lot of the innovation that that was, uh, current and alive and kicking now.

[00:06:46] Zoe Rose : Okay.

[00:06:47] Gerry Scullion: So we'll frame it from the fifties on.

[00:06:49] Zoe Rose : Depending on what you wanna do and where you wanna go. We also have different, uh, different standard, different, um, sources of evidence [00:07:00] that we can rely on for different stages of, uh, history and archeology. Now there's gonna be archeologists out there who are gonna be slightly annoyed at me for, for this oversimplification.

[00:07:11] Zoe Rose : Yeah. But the point at which cultures develop writing. Or choose to adopt writing. Bearing in mind that not every culture that encountered writing actually chose to adopt it. Okay. Mm-hmm. Um, that changes what we know. Uh, if we are exclu, if you were exclusively walking through my house and the only thing that you knew about this house was that had coffee cups and chairs, um, and an odd, uh, lump of metal that seemed to have contained something at some point, that wouldn't actually tell you what I was thinking, doing, feeling, seeing, being.

[00:07:48] Zoe Rose : Right. Yeah. So there's a, I would be really hesitant about including, uh, too much specific [00:08:00] about, uh, indigenous Australian culture into a conversation like this, just because so much is guesswork if we are looking into the deep past, and a lot of the innovation that's happening now is the kind of thing that people talk about.

[00:08:14] Zoe Rose : Yeah.

[00:08:15] Gerry Scullion: Like, So sense in the fifties, what did it look like then in the US as you were saying? So, all right, who was, who was leading the way? Who's doing the interesting work in the 1950s as regards to progression of design methodologies,

[00:08:28] Zoe Rose : right? So the answer to that is going to annoy you more than you can possibly predict.

[00:08:33] Gerry Scullion: Starting to annoy me now. Joking.

[00:08:39] Zoe Rose : The person who's actually doing a lot of the kickoff work around what will eventually emerge into, uh, academic research based study of creative thinking, uh, is actually the guy who came up with brainstorming. Alright. Yeah, that guy. Okay. So his name is Alex Osborne. Mm-hmm. Uh, he's an [00:09:00] advertising executive, like full.

[00:09:01] Zoe Rose : You've gotta think like cigar chomping, madman, sort of a situation. Yeah.

[00:09:07] Gerry Scullion: Mirror. Yep.

[00:09:08] Zoe Rose : Mm-hmm. So the situation he found, wild guy. Yeah. No, no. Like you've got like with the, with the bristle cream through the hair. Oh yeah. This guy.

[00:09:17] Gerry Scullion: Yeah. All.

[00:09:22] Zoe Rose : Yeah, in the 1930s he had a advertising agency. The agitation ad, the agency hit the skids. Um, they were running out of money. He needed to do something relatively drastic. He came up with an idea. There's. Little caveat hanging off of that. Um, he came up with an idea, uh, and he developed into the process, which he later wrote a book about, and that book was called Applied Imagination 1953.

[00:09:50] Zoe Rose : And that introduced, uh, the world or mostly America to the process he came up with, which he called brainstorming. Now, if I had to ask you now, Jerry, what [00:10:00] would you say that is? What, what is the brainstorming process

[00:10:04] Gerry Scullion: Is getting everything laterally. Everything that's on your mind that's interconnected to a subject onto a wall so other people can build on

[00:10:14] Zoe Rose : it.

[00:10:14] Zoe Rose : Yep. Terrific. That is universally the answer that I, I get is some variation of that osborn's brainstorming process was actually a three-step process. Okay. The first step was to get everybody into a, for any given value of anybody, everybody. Get everybody into a room and get 'em talking about a problem and just come up with as many ideas as they possibly could.

[00:10:39] Zoe Rose : Okay. Purely a numbers game. And he was very specific that you're not allowed to shoot anyone down. It's very much a yes, and we are just trying to get number, number, number as much as we possibly can about ways to potentially solve this problem. Step two. Yeah. Step two was just go away and not think about it [00:11:00] for a day.

[00:11:01] Gerry Scullion: Okay, lovely. The subconscious plays into it then. Pardon? The, the power of the subconscious. You let the subconscious much like

[00:11:07] Zoe Rose : just, just let it, just let it just state. Yeah. And the third step was to come back, uh, later, hopefully after overnight. Go look at all the ideas you had. And narrow it down to the one or two out of the entire spread that might actually solve the problem or the problem area that you were already given.

[00:11:28] Zoe Rose : Now we're designers, so we kind of recognize that, right? Yeah. That's diverge. Converge. Yeah. That's what he's doing. He's doing diverge, converge. Yeah, but he didn't. Come up with the idea of diverge, converge. Like he didn't come up with the, um, uh, the language of diverge, converge. That was actually someone who was doing research, uh, another American who was doing psychological research with, um, pilots in World War ii.

[00:11:59] Zoe Rose : [00:12:00] Right? Because he was pretty sure that creative thinking. Which he called, uh, which he came up as diverge, converge, the, the kind of intelligence that goes in many directions. That's what he was looking for. He was pretty sure that was a better predicate of leadership than IQ tests. Oh, and he had a good reason for thinking so too.

[00:12:22] Gerry Scullion: Okay. On the Alex Osborne one here, just Yep. I see that he was actually the O in B B D O, the ad agency. Was he? Yeah. So I'm just on that point. I never realized that. O I didn't, I didn't know who that was. In fact, I can't even remember the B, B D, but the, um, the Osborne is, uh, the O in B P D O, the, the ad agency, I know, I know them from London.

[00:12:48] Gerry Scullion: I think they were in Australia, or maybe they weren't in Australia, but anyway, that's, that's, so that was probably, what did you say? He, he was 1938. It says on, on the website that I'm in here. That was probably when he was born. So it was in the fifties that he was working [00:13:00] in this think up, um, brainstorming method.

[00:13:03] Gerry Scullion: Was it? Yeah. So he,

[00:13:04] Zoe Rose : he started using it in his own business in the thirties. Yeah. And he wrote a book about it in the, in the fifties.

[00:13:11] Gerry Scullion: Okay, so it was popularized then. Yeah. In the ad world. Was it?

[00:13:15] Zoe Rose : No, it went nuts. It was a, uh, an airport book, you know, it was, it was the, it was the airport. It was the, kind of fell into the same cultural category as Rich Dad, poor Dad, or the, you know, one of those books that everyone reads.

[00:13:31] Zoe Rose : For a little while. Uh, but something that's really interesting is that, um, even by the second edition, he's got an update, he's writing in the second edition and he's writing in the second edition about how annoyed he is about all these people, um, trying his process, doing it badly, and then saying it's a beat up.

[00:13:51] Zoe Rose : So like the, um, the rise and fall, the, the disillusionment with brainstorming is not actually being, all it cracked up to be was already [00:14:00] solidly in play within a couple of years.

[00:14:02] Gerry Scullion: Wow. So people were like, this is a lot of crock of beep.

[00:14:07] Zoe Rose : Yeah. Yeah. Tried it didn't work. Ridiculous.

[00:14:10] Gerry Scullion: Yeah, cuz I remember like working in ad agencies in, uh, the mid two thousands and they were like, okay, we're gonna do a brainstorming session.

[00:14:18] Gerry Scullion: I'm like, why would you bother? Like, this is, most people who've been through it just kind of go, like, there's, there's not enough rigor in the, in the process to really. Get something out that's of value. That's my perspective anyway,

[00:14:32] Zoe Rose : but I'll bet you that you didn't do it the way that Osborn sent out, which actually was kinda

[00:14:37] Gerry Scullion: rigorous.

[00:14:38] Gerry Scullion: Yeah, I like, I love the fact in that he left it for a a day. Ideally a night to let the subconscious go because like one of my favorite videos is John Cleese, where he speaks about the power of the subconsciousness, and he tells a story of when he was writing Faulty Towers and he was going through one of his many divorces and, um, he had to leave the house, so read [00:15:00] between the lines and he had the script and, um, he came back to it and he couldn't find it.

[00:15:05] Gerry Scullion: Mm-hmm. And uh, he was like, oh man, I need to get the script into the BBC for the, for the Wednesday. And, um, what he did was he. Wrote it from Recollection, and that's the, the script that was produced for Faulty Towers, the one that's become a classic. And then it wasn't until several years later that he moved his desk away and the bit behind the desk he found the original transcript and what he could see.

[00:15:33] Gerry Scullion: That was the second draft was considerably better. And from the time you're writing the first draft to the second draft, the power of the subconscious was, was at play and was rewriting in his mind these, uh, loose ends in the script. Mm-hmm. And that ultimately, as he says, the power of the subconscious, just leaving it, letting it sit and coming back to it with fresh eyes is really, really rewarding.

[00:15:54] Gerry Scullion: We probably don't do that enough in design, to be honest.

[00:15:57] Zoe Rose : I tend to agree. There's, there's a [00:16:00] lot of advantage in letting your mind sort something out Yeah. While you go and attend to other things.

[00:16:07] Gerry Scullion: Absolutely, like drink wine. So, um, so let's say, so we've got Alex Osborne, uh, he's up there on the board.

[00:16:15] Gerry Scullion: Mm-hmm. It's in the thirties, published in the fifties. Um, what's the next methods that in the, the longitudinal history of design Methods by Zoe Rose? What's the one there? What's the one that you're, you're focusing on next to? Give us a bit of a breath. Well, one actually

[00:16:32] Zoe Rose : gets, it actually gets really interesting because most of the work that went into, uh, thank you, um, apply creativity after this.

[00:16:44] Zoe Rose : Yeah. And trying to create. What, what the academics were really trying to do was they were tr and they were largely academics. They were trying mm-hmm. To, uh, establish repeatable processes. So in [00:17:00] science, one of the things that defines the scientific process is that if you do it a second time, you'll get the same results.

[00:17:06] Zoe Rose : So reproducibility. Yeah. And they were trying to do the same thing. And you get a lot of quite, um, dense, thick, voluminous academic publications going through this. And they don't quite get it. And they don't get it. They don't quite get it. They don't get quite get it. Um, something really turns the tables on all of this in 1971.

[00:17:26] Zoe Rose : Yeah. So. Which is slightly after, uh, Osborne. What should be Osborne's? Uh, greatest moment, in my opinion, where you get a guy called Hors Riddle, r i t t e l. Mm-hmm. And his collaborator, who I'm sure, because you're looking this up, you'll tell me his name in a second. I've just momentarily forgot it. They come.

[00:17:48] Gerry Scullion: Johanna's Riddle, huh? Horse Riddle. Johanna's Riddle. Yep.

[00:17:54] Zoe Rose : Anna's collaborator. And what they come up with in 1971. Yeah. Uh, is a [00:18:00] phrase that we will all have heard. They came up with the wicked problem.

[00:18:03] Gerry Scullion: Okay. Ah, okay. The wicked problem. Yeah. Right. So

[00:18:07] Zoe Rose : the wicked is it? Yep. There's a reason. Yep. So there's a reason why this became famous.

[00:18:14] Zoe Rose : Mm-hmm. The reason why this became famous is that riddle through effectively applying maths, uh, demonstrated that the efforts within this cohort to identify the one true reproducible process, which will always come up with a creative solution that works every single time was intrinsically flawed, and that there exists in the world.

[00:18:36] Zoe Rose : Problems that provably cannot yield to a single process due to their inherent complexity, and that's what a wicked problem is. It's a problem that you cannot solve through the application of any process, no matter how good the process is. Okay. Now something that I wanna throw onto this, um, topic, [00:19:00] uh, is that riddle had riddle as your guest from his name.

[00:19:03] Zoe Rose : He was German and he was living in America. Uh, he knew something that a lot of the, uh, American enthusiasts didn't and will pause here. Just to note that everyone I'm describing here is pretty much like a white, well educated north of North American man. Like across the board and they have the life experiences that, that are, those of those people at that era hoist has lived experience that they don't because ho remembers World War ii.

[00:19:36] Zoe Rose : Mm-hmm. And he has actually a very solid understanding of what can happen in circumstances where you try to apply, uh, what. Was called at the time of solution, um, universally to a problem that's deemed to be complex. Mm-hmm. Which is one of the ways in which we can describe the, [00:20:00] uh, mass murders of Jews, gay people, transgender people, gypsies, seventh Day Adventists, and several other groups during what we now refer to as the Holocaust.

[00:20:13] Zoe Rose : Yeah. So I am. I don't believe that there's a stretch, uh, involved in saying that. Uh, problem solving methodologies have the potential to be used for evil. Uh, there have been many instances where we've seen problem solving methodologies used for evil. There is a certain cultural tendency, uh, in design as it's currently practiced in the West where you and I both are, um, to think of ourselves effectively as the good guys.

[00:20:45] Zoe Rose : And we always do the good things with our good methods. Uh, our methods are universally neutral. Yeah. And it is, I think, uh, I think. More attention to the history of design, design [00:21:00] methodologies and the outcomes of design methodologies would be very good for us as an industry. Because every time that we do what you were describing before, avoiding history, seeing our methods as being a historical acultural, acontextual, uh, we, uh, put ourselves in a position where we can accidentally create risk.

[00:21:23] Gerry Scullion: Yeah. I mean, there's, there's no doubt that if you look historically over the last 25 or 30 years in the proliferation of design, that not every design has been created for good. Mm-hmm.

[00:21:40] Zoe Rose : Really good intentions that still end up hurting people. Absolutely.

[00:21:44] Gerry Scullion: Well, looking at the most popular one to, to kind of poo on Facebook, um, that was never created out of, you know, kind of, I'm gonna erode society and really contradict democracy and, and trying to, um, basically [00:22:00] evoke evil in in the world.

[00:22:01] Gerry Scullion: That was never the mandate. You can just so easily see how it can just morph into a different direction. And they have, they have great designers. They've had great designers involved in the team, um, over the years, but yet they're in that situation now where most people would be, not too sorry to see them kind of go down the Suwanee, you know what I mean?

[00:22:22] Gerry Scullion: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So, Looking at wicked problems, um, I thought was Richard Buchanan was the originator of Wicked Problems in the nineties. But you're telling me now that that came from the seventies.

[00:22:34] Zoe Rose : Oh, it's all earlier than you think.

[00:22:36] Gerry Scullion: Yeah, it's, isn't it? Um, so that's why I, one eyebrow raised when you were like, uh, and then a course Ritalin, where I've, I've heard Ri Riddle and Weber and I've seen them in papers and stuff.

[00:22:47] Gerry Scullion: So I've show shown my naivety. Um, So that was, uh, in the, in the seventies. And who's adopting the wicked problem? Uh, I hate calling that a method, cuz to me it's more of a mindset [00:23:00] that you're trying to bring.

[00:23:01] Zoe Rose : This is the really interesting thing. Now I am. Just starting to look into this a bit as part of an aspect of, um, some of my master's research and I'm, I'm here to tell you one of the really difficult things about trying to investigate a lost area of history Yeah.

[00:23:22] Zoe Rose : Is that some of it is lost, so it's a little bit harder. I mean, like if I was like learning all about Ma Murray Curie, this, this would not be a problem, but it seems that the. Bafflingly. Um, it seems that the wicked problems, um, in position, uh, actually succeeded, uh, to a huge extent. And a lot of the people who were interested in developing, um, replicable creative thinking methodologies just went, oh, rubbish.

[00:23:56] Zoe Rose : That that seemed, he, it looks like he's right. Probably we can't do [00:24:00] this now. There was one method that I'd like to turn your attention to from, I believe it was published in 1967. Uh, cuz this is relevant to every designer who's listening now, but we are unfortunately very deep in the weeds of, of things that are hard to track down.

[00:24:18] Zoe Rose : So we've got, um, uh, the guy who came up with Diverge Convert was called JP Gilford, and he's one of my favorite. People in all of history. He's wonderful. Mm-hmm. He's given us Ja, uh, diverge. Converge. And he's a psychologist. Uh, so New York? Yep. Pardon?

[00:24:41] Gerry Scullion: He's from New York,

[00:24:42] Zoe Rose : wasn't he? Yep. He's, yep. He's a psychologist.

[00:24:45] Zoe Rose : Uh, so he is bringing the academic flavor, Osborn's, bringing the, uh, corporate business flavor. We'll see this actually develop through the invention of business schools, which is going to happen over this era or two. [00:25:00] And by the time we get to, uh, the mid sixties, we've got, Osborne is working with Sydney Palms.

[00:25:10] Zoe Rose : P A R N E s. Between the two of them, they come up with an institute for creative thinking, for teaching creative thinking. They do all sorts of fabulous stuff. Unfortunately, in the mid 1960s, Osborne actually dies. Osborne out of the two of them really had the marketing fla. You'd expect that him being an advertiser.

[00:25:30] Zoe Rose : So what I think is the most important thing that he eventually actually did has become a little bit lost to the sand of time because Pan did not have that marketing fla. Mm-hmm. In 67, they released the Osborne Pans Creative Solving Method. I think they call it a method. And what's interesting about this, Is that we've already established that with our brainstorming, we are using that divert.

[00:25:56] Zoe Rose : Converge. Okay. Yeah. In the [00:26:00] Pans Osborne process, they're going to set out five steps at this stage. Okay. Osborne is really annoyed that everyone thinks that brainstorming is a complete problem solving process, whereas far as he's concerned, it's just part of ideation. Yeah. Right. Which is only one part of problem solving.

[00:26:21] Zoe Rose : Enhance, they're gonna set out mid process. Yeah. Yep. They're gonna set out five steps, um, right. For creative problem solving. I'm not gonna get them right off the top of my head, but you'll probably recognize them. I think it is, uh uh, it is finding the problem area, defining the problem area, coming up with solutions.

[00:26:46] Zoe Rose : Oh. This is annoying. I'm gonna have to look up on my phone. Uh, and the last one is test. And those, they express each and every single one as being a diverge, converge process. [00:27:00] So like little diamonds, like the double diamonds? Yeah. Five little diamonds all on their side. Yeah. And those five steps map exactly to something we will all know very well, which is, IDs five step of design thinking process.

[00:27:15] Gerry Scullion: You mean to, you mean to Tammy? They didn't come up with that themselves. Oh my, my world is chattered. You, you, I don't believe you. That they didn't, IDO didn't come up with design. No.

[00:27:32] Gerry Scullion: What? I don't believe

[00:27:35] Zoe Rose : you Crazy days, right?

[00:27:38] Gerry Scullion: Something and claim to themselves. Wow. So, uh, I've got them here. The, the five steps here are, um, when I, when you click into Google, it gives you a different, so it's fact finding, problem finding, idea finding, solution finding and acceptance

[00:27:55] Zoe Rose : finding. There we go.

[00:27:56] Zoe Rose : You've got it. That's, that's the one, that's the five. Yeah. So

[00:27:59] Gerry Scullion: [00:28:00] it's a five step process. Um mm-hmm. That evolved into a six step model afterwards. Yeah. By pans, which we spoke, we spoke a little bit about. Um, so at this point then, you know, you're looking at David Keeley at that stage in the 67 era. Um, who went on with Id o um, what was his role?

[00:28:23] Gerry Scullion: Because like, I know we, we, we joke, um, What was his role like? Obviously he was, um, absorbing an awful lot of this kind of work. Um, I'm not pissing David Keeley completely, but there was an opportunity there that he saw and he was like, well, we can commercialize this and we can actually sell this. Um, but how was he involved or was he involved?

[00:28:44] Gerry Scullion: I

[00:28:44] Zoe Rose : couldn't tell you. Directly, but I can tell you this, there is an uncanny parallel. Yeah. Between Osborne's, uh, uh, advertising agency collapsed that he had to do something desperate about in 1938 [00:29:00] and IDEO's response to the first.com crash of 2001, right? Because I d o, after the 2000 one.com crash, they lost all their clients.

[00:29:11] Gerry Scullion: Okay. Nice. They went, yeah, that And

[00:29:14] Zoe Rose : what year did they invent and start, well, sorry, more specifically, what year did they start selling Creative Thinking services? 2001. Was it, it was also 2001. That's right. The, the double the, um, the, uh, design Thinking, the Five Step Process was released by I ideo in 2001.

[00:29:32] Zoe Rose : Ok. So that point of pivot is an exact parallel to what happened to Osborn back in the day.

[00:29:38] Gerry Scullion: Okay. And at that point there, um, the design council were probably looking at the double diamond, which was from recollection 2005. Um, wasn't around that time.

[00:29:50] Zoe Rose : Uh, I'm grinning ear to ear because I get to do like a bit of a mic drop.

[00:29:53] Zoe Rose : Yes, it was. And if you go onto the, uh, design council website and have a little bit of a poke [00:30:00] around, yeah. There is a testimony, um, from. The MD who came, who, who delivered the double diamonds, where he talks about a conversation that he had a little while earlier about design process models with, uh, the person doing the same work at ideo.

[00:30:21] Zoe Rose : And I think there's even a little throwaway line there that says, of course, kite, kite shape design models have been used since the 1960s. Hmm. Which is where we see our Osborne plants.

[00:30:34] Gerry Scullion: Okay. Okay. So in terms of the design council, the double diamond, um, that, the double diamond and the ID five step process mm-hmm.

[00:30:49] Gerry Scullion: Kind of go hand in hand. Yep.

[00:30:51] Zoe Rose : It's funny isn't it? You, they, they are. Well they did. It's, it's on their own public documentation, um, for the design counts that they [00:31:00] did collaborate on it. Basically, if you think of the diamond, the double diamond as being a couple of diamonds and you think of IDs being five steps.

[00:31:08] Zoe Rose : The source text of Osborne Pans is five diamonds. Hmm.

[00:31:16] Gerry Scullion: So there's a diamond. Well, yeah, the double diamond.

[00:31:18] Zoe Rose : Yep. So you just split that into design table, takes the shape and uh, IDEO takes the steps and here we are.

[00:31:28] Gerry Scullion: Yeah. Which is the same, it's the same process. It's just, it's exactly the same process. Yeah.

[00:31:34] Gerry Scullion: You know, I was speaking to somebody before a couple of years ago in Australia, and I was like, well, you can have as many diamonds as you want. And I, I, I actually have an even better story in New South Wales government where I was trying to introduce them to service design thinking, and, um, I could see there was a lot of puzzled faces in the room.

[00:31:52] Gerry Scullion: Like cuz they were like, Hmm. And I came in the next day, and I am not lying when I say this, that the project [00:32:00] manager had printed out the double diamond numerous times and was getting the scissors out, chopping it up, trying to figure out how, how to, how to place the double diamond into their delivery process.

[00:32:10] Gerry Scullion: And I'm like, that's, that's not gonna work. And they go, why? And I go, cause, cause you're just cutting. Square is that paper? Oh,

[00:32:19] Zoe Rose : no, I look, this is probably enough years ago that I'm safe to tell the story if I don't, um, name any names. I, I did once see, um, uh, an agency that shall remain on names, um, uh, deliver an artifact to a client, um, that was showing off the results of their discovery research, um, where they had like popped they.

[00:32:45] Zoe Rose : They popped all their discovery research into the four quadrants of the double diamond, right?

[00:32:53] Gerry Scullion: Yeah.

[00:32:54] Zoe Rose : It was the weirdest thing you've ever seen.

[00:32:58] Gerry Scullion: This could, this could [00:33:00] rapidly go downhill as a podcast where people just start coming, throwing,

[00:33:03] Zoe Rose : no, we won't do that. We won't tell

[00:33:04] Gerry Scullion: terrible stories all day. Laughing. Um, but like, it's, uh, the, the double diamond piece is the one we like to say, like, you know, there's, there's probably some other stuff going on there, but it's done a huge, uh, service to the, to the design industry.

[00:33:21] Gerry Scullion: It helped catapult. Design into the conversations at the board level and was like, actually, you know what? There's a lot of value to this kind of thinking. What was it, do you think that IDO and even the design council as well to some extent, what did they do better, um, than say, Osborne Pares did with the five-step model?

[00:33:40] Gerry Scullion: Or was it just a case of right time, right place, marketing, marketing. You think? I would say there must be, there must have been a piece there. I was like, the, the Pars and Osborne model, the world just wasn't really ready for it at that point.

[00:33:55] Zoe Rose : It can maybe, and also they were up against like, uh, the, uh, [00:34:00] the revelation of, um, the wicked problems that came immediately after.

[00:34:05] Zoe Rose : So I don't think that this is, This story is separable from the rise of business schools. Mm-hmm. Now, the interesting thing about a business school is that a business school is predicated on the idea that you don't have to understand any industry. That all industries are fundamentally the same. And if you understand some, uh, high level decontextualize general things about business, then you can run any business.

[00:34:34] Zoe Rose : Now that's not entirely dissimilar from the way that we as designers approach things either. Yeah. I am really quite surprised that we don't have more, um, Subject matter specialists who stay in their area of subject matter. I mean, I'm an education person. Mm-hmm. I think there should be roles. I think, I think that everyone would benefit from there being roles that were education design [00:35:00] specific rather than people parachuting in and out of, of that field.

[00:35:04] Zoe Rose : So when we look at, um, IDEA and what they did, they promulgated design thinking in partnership with Stanford's D school. Right, which is an offshoot of the business school. Yeah, yeah. Now, if we think back and remember that part of our source, part of our source text here is military, and it's from military research.

[00:35:25] Zoe Rose : And I'd like to invite you to ask me more about that because it's fascinating. Um, part of it is from that military research with the pilots. Part of it is from that business book. Uh, so we can see in both those instances the, uh, organizational requirements. Are the ones that are doing the driving. Mm-hmm.

[00:35:47] Zoe Rose : Uh, and yeah, I think the, that the, the D School partnership with Stanford was the thing that really cemented, uh, design thinking, not least because with such a good match with the [00:36:00] offering that business schools already had, you know, learned some generic things, apply them anywhere. That's exactly what we do when we promulgate the, do the, um, the design thinking process.

[00:36:10] Gerry Scullion: Yeah. Yeah, it's, um, there's food for thought there. I think everyone who's listening to this episode will probably be kind of gone. We've learned, we've learned something today about the origin. I'm thinking an awful lot. One of my favorite methods we haven't really covered off is canino modeling. Mm-hmm.

[00:36:30] Gerry Scullion: Which I believe came from the Toyota School School of Thinking, um, by Nario. Mm-hmm. But I think that was in the eighties. So we've kind of, we've kind of jumped over the eighties. Um, but there's, there's probably, I mean, we, we could do a, we could do a, a whole day talking about this stuff, but

[00:36:52] Zoe Rose : CanBan is the 1940s CanBan,

[00:36:55] Gerry Scullion: um, was it?

[00:36:57] Zoe Rose : Yep. Toyota Corporation. [00:37:00] It was the forties. Yes, it was. It was. Wow. Yeah, it was, um, it was a post-war, um, provision. So I believe there was a specific, I believe McCarthy made an addict that, um, Toyota Corporation wasn't allowed to build a car. They weren't allowed to build a certain number of things, and they almost went broke.

[00:37:21] Zoe Rose : So they had to get very, very, very, very good, um, at minimizing waste. As fast as they could, and those of you who are really familiar with CanBan will recognize that that minimizing waste is, is intrinsic to it. Um, yeah. But yeah, it's, it's a 1940s technology. Mm-hmm.

[00:37:38] Gerry Scullion: It's a 1940s technology, but yet whenever I'm, I'm Googling Riak Kino here.

[00:37:43] Gerry Scullion: It's Everest as the eighties. It was developed in the eighties, so it was, maybe it was originated in the forties and popularized in the eighties, perhaps.

[00:37:52] Zoe Rose : Well, do you know what, Jerry? If it turns out I'm telling you a lie, I will apologize 10 to 12 times over.

[00:37:58] Gerry Scullion: I want to see a [00:38:00] public posting on LinkedIn, apologizing for the miscommunication of the origination modeling on the, this Is Hate City podcast with Jerry s Scalian, and I want to see, you know, and I apologize, poster the size, potentially about two meters wide.

[00:38:17] Gerry Scullion: Yeah, held above your head. I'm really joking. But yeah, it is saying 1980s, um, on Wikipedia, which we all know to be the ultimate source of truth for absolutely everything that has ever happened on this planet.

[00:38:30] Zoe Rose : Sorry, is that CAO or Canan? Uh, Canino. Okay. No. Okay. No. Uh, CanBan is the 1940s. Uh, CanBan is the forties.

[00:38:39] Zoe Rose : That's the one CanBan.

[00:38:40] Gerry Scullion: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. CanBan. That's right. I knew, I knew that was, um, that was also from Toyota, correct? CanBan

[00:38:48] Zoe Rose : was Toyota. Yes. CanBan was Toyota. That's, that's what they were doing. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. There

[00:38:53] Gerry Scullion: they created some, uh, amazing stuff. Yeah. Look, you know, in, in the air effort of, uh, [00:39:00] trying to give people as much information as possible, um, I'm sure we could speak for another couple of hours on talking about the methods.

[00:39:08] Gerry Scullion: I know you're working on a number of talks though, um, at the moment. Um, so if people wanna reach out to you and learn more about when you're speaking, where you're speaking, what you're doing, um, what's the best way for people to, to get in touch with you and also learn more about your business? Great question, which is based on camera.

[00:39:28] Gerry Scullion: Um, give us a shout out to how people can connect with you.

[00:39:32] Zoe Rose : Fantastic. So I am at, uh, great question.com.au. Yeah. The training business that I run focuses on usability and accessibility, which I think of as access great areas, usability for, for disabled people. Yeah. Uh, I'm a disabled person myself. Uh, so I help train people in getting their heads around things like design for disability, uh, accessibility [00:40:00] standards, content design, form design, all the stuff that you need to be able to do.

[00:40:05] Gerry Scullion: Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. Well, we'd love to have you back on the podcast, so to talk about all of those things cuz they're really, really important conversations and I know the listeners of this is CD will offend you great today. And also Will, uh, will love to learn more about, you know, those topics that you've just spoken about.

[00:40:23] Gerry Scullion: I'll put a link to your LinkedIn on, uh, in the show notes for this episode so he can connect with Zoe Asks Zoey questions. Mm-hmm. Um, are you on, uh, the Twitter or, uh, mastered on, have you moved over yet?

[00:40:35] Zoe Rose : I am going down with the ship on Twitter. Unfortunately, it's so embarrassing to be me.

[00:40:44] Zoe Rose : Glory, and I'll have, uh, I will have a article coming out soon on the, uh, the website hosted by Dovetail. Which we'll be talking about. [00:41:00] Yep. Yep. Uh, so I've written an article, uh, for them, which is about a lot about what we've talked about and how it relates to, uh, IQ testing and the misuse of data, including in scientific racism and eugenics again, in the 1950s mostly, but not exclusively in the United States.

[00:41:25] Gerry Scullion: Wow. All right, well I'm on the Dovetail newsletter anyway, so I'm looking forward to seeing that. And if you do get a chance, send it gross to me and it could be something I pop into the newsletter as well. For people on this is a cd.com, sign up to the newsletter. So listen, look, I've had an absolutely amazing time speaking with you today.

[00:41:42] Gerry Scullion: I wanna say special thanks for giving me, uh, the time, cuz I know it's your evening over in Australia. Um, so thank you from the bottom of my heart for, for giving me all the, the time and energy and the information as well. Terrific.

[00:41:53] Zoe Rose : Thank you so much dairy.

[00:41:58] Gerry Scullion: And there you go folks. I hope [00:42:00] you enjoyed that episode and if you enjoyed it and want to listen to more, why not visit? This is hate cd.com where you can learn more about what we are up to and also explore our courses whil through there. Thanks again for listening.

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