Why tools and diagrams are detrimental to your creative problem solving capacity

I love Service Design, but I don’t use a lot of tools. That might sound like heresy to a lot of Service Designers, but it shouldn’t. To much focus on tools and diagrams turns Service Design into something instrumental. It suffocates three important strategies for innovation.

I once met a Design Thinking student that carried a book of more than a hundred tools. She treated it like her bible. For her Design Thinking equalled tools. That was how it was taught to her in school. Also the book This is Service Design Thinking, that was one of the first books to explain the field of Service Design, consists mainly of tools.

If you see Service Design and Design Thinking as a collection of tools, it’s easy. Easy to learn, easy to apply. Anyone can do it. Which is cool. Service Design and Design Thinking are hot and it lowers the barrier of entry. The problem however is that these tools all work. They produce results. If you do a creative exercise, if you fill in a diagram together or crack open a box of lego, you arrive at ideas, solutions and directions. And any ideas, solution or directions might be better than none at all. But it’s important to realize that you are not operating in reality. You are solving problems within the boundaries and mindset of the tool you are using. Just as an IQ test doesn’t measure how smart you are, but how good you are in taking IQ tests, solving a problem in a tool is not solving a problem in reality. This means that if you use a tool, you arrive at a solution that works in the tool. Any tool and diagram is an abstraction of reality, only showing you a part or maybe a different reality all together. They can be used to uncover new insights, but the translation to reality is the hardest part. You have not solved a problem in reality. The distortion of your view of reality and the real problems therein is detrimental to your problem solving capacity.

Creativity killers

Most tools and ready-made diagrams force you into a straight jacket that will suffocate creativity. Your problem solving capacity revolves around three things that are killed by tools and diagrams:

• Connection to reality is lost. As stated above, you want to solve problems in reality, not in your diagram. What might work in your diagram, might not work in reality. Reality is far more complex than your diagram and staring too long at it blinds you from the complexity of reality in which your solutions have to perform. It also blinds you from the possibilities and ideas that reality can provide. You become deaf to the solutions that reality can hand you.
• Improvisation is boxed out. Tools and diagrams have strict rules. To use them means to abide by their rules. They only work if you follow the rules. These rules might pull you out of your comfort zone far enough to get some new ideas. But they allow little room for improvisation, coloring outside the lines, play. This is the fabric creativity is built from. Filling in a diagram or using a tool usually boxes in any improvisation. And improvisation and playing around is the best way to discover new solutions that work.
• Intuition is suppressed. Buddhists refer to the rational mind as the “small mind” and intuition as the “big mind”. Intuition is far more creative than ratio. Anyone who relies on his creativity knows they have to foster their connection to their intuition. Tools and diagrams most often put you in a rational state from which it is very difficult to access and thus develop your intuition.

There is another way

Using a lot of tools and diagrams is a valid way to practice Service Design. I believe it is important to realize the limits and dangers of them. I also occasionally use them, but I am following a different path. My strategy is to stay as close to reality as possible. I found that if you are able to talk to real users and work with prototypes as soon and long as possible, you are creating an environment where the three strategies for creative problem solving I mentioned above can flourish.

It’s hard to disagree with a diagram. It has its own rules and it operates on a level of abstraction in which it’s hard to see flaws. It’s easy to argue with a prototype. Anyone can understand it. Anyone can reverse engineer what is needed to get there. Anyone can make a suggestion on how to improve it. And you can test it easily in reality. Diagrams and tools have a lot of assumptions baked into them that you might not see. And assumptions are the enemy of good solutions. You want to test your assumptions as soon as possible. I use a Lean Startup approach to Service Design. Build, measure, learn. You can learn a lot more from a prototype than from a diagram. It’s much easier to communicate about a prototype than about a diagram. It’s much easier to involve and inspire people with a prototype than a tool. It’s much harder to provide a false sense of security with a prototype than with a tool.

Ripple effects

The effect something has is much more important than the thing itself. I think it is important to think about the ripple effects of diagrams and tool. To think about what mindset and culture they create in a project, what image of reality and the process. I have seen to many occasions where diagrams put the project members in a mindset that limits their creative problem solving potential more than it enhances it. I have seen to many occasions where people are very happy that they used a tool to come to a solution that is to hard to translate into the reality in which it has to live. The initial excitement has a tendency to die quickly with this approach.

Maybe my one tool approach (just prototype and talk to people) is too extreme and also has its downsides, but drowning in hundreds of tools and diagrams is the other extreme. Mastery of the Service Design tools to me means not only knowing how to fill out a the next cool canvas, but to know what the ripple effects on the problem solving capacity, quality of solutions and long term engagement of stakeholders are. Studying the limits, power and effects of any tool, diagram or solutions is the core of strategic design.