Feel the problem

When setting out to solve a complex problem, you have to first feel it, viscerally.

You have to be open to empathy. Soften your mind. Listen. Humble yourself enough to learn and experience it.

In clinical work, being in the room gets me as close as I can to experiencing the problem myself.

I’m convinced I produce materially better ideas after spending time with the person experiencing the problem vs. only reading about the problem in a report.

I could never quantitatively prove my solutions are better this way. But I’ve experienced it too many times to ignore.

You watch someone stop what they’re doing to deal with a system. You see the workarounds they’ve invented. You notice the hesitation before they click something because the stakes are really high.

You start to feel some of what they feel. Frustration. Confusion. Anxiety.

Suddenly the workflow feels absurd. That feeling is useful.

I often find myself personally offended by the other peoples problems, once I experience them. It’s a feeling that’s kind of hard to describe. But I’ve learned to pay attention to that feeling. It creates a kind of creative intolerance, and it spurs me on to better solutioning.

Once you’ve experienced someone struggling with a problem, you become less willing to accept the machinery around it. Things you might have accepted as requirements start looking like choices.

Why do they have to do this? Why was this designed this way? Why does this step exist? Is this requirement really a requirement?

The deeper you feel the problem, the less willing you are to merely improve the process someone gave you. You want to remove the source of the frustration altogether.