HCD is far from perfect. As it grew up and we grew up, we learned about our biases, about our most imperfect interview techniques, and about being unintentionally extractive. But it's an approach that learns and changes. Witness the birth of Liberatory Design, Equity-Centered Design, Design Justice, and more. The HCD of 2023 is not the HCD of 2003.

What might it look like if the innovation shop had a parallel track to implementation that curated additional use cases? Building in expectations of reuse and hiring people with reuse as a superpower would be a great start. Or much easier, while sharing with others, in whatever format (conferences, informal sharing, LinkedIn, etc.), a simple last question could be, “What other challenges might this help with?”

Insightful communities will wonder why the community or ‘system’ itself is generating toxic stress. This is a subtle and powerful shift from focus on the individual to focus on the system and is the first step into “systems thinking.”

Called the Innovation Safari*, it has been a long-time staple in my practice and remains a powerful tool to unlock and unleash creativity and problem-solving.

To date, there are over 65,000 young people who accessed the tool, but there are many more that need to. It's the collaborative efforts of It Gets Better Project, CenterLink, and Hopelab (where I led the initiative to bring this tool to life) that demonstrate the power of #ecosystems and #humancentereddesign.

Our pets are widely known to offer proven health effects. However, there is a disproportionate benefit to young people as animal companionship goes down year after year as we age, and some of that is structural.

The summary could have talked instead about a sprained MCL, but an AI-enabled ambient documentation system heard the way the skaterboy talked about his knee and created a skaterboy-centric summary that was clear, understandable, and relatable.

We now have the ability/power to create dynamic solutions that adapt to each population and individual so that much more of the curve achieves the same (or similar) outcome; THIS approaches equity in health outcomes.

All the stuff that produces innovation results from understanding problems and opportunities all the way to products and services producing value.

The drifting was into sparks of creativity and old-fashioned daydreaming, creating a bridge to more and more wondering.

Creative destruction is intentional destruction to create more fertile space for new ideas to take hold.

Democratization, humans, and value!

Whether your organization is just getting started or needs a transformation tune-up, these nine principles will leapfrog your organization into the future.

Going through it is almost mechanical. And reflecting on it in the past tense is almost always a non-event [yawn].

If you look at the big, audacious successes, they are built on a stockpile of “no”. No after no, planting seeds. No after no, chipping away at barriers. No after no, offering pivots. No after no, finding back alleys and back doors. No after no, until yes.

We are working really hard to make a difference in the lives of patients and the people who serve them. We are making healing and wellness the best it can be. We are doing this work with our hearts, minds, and souls. It's our Burning Ambition, not a Burning Platform.

…a twist where the museum could have commissioned a series of oil paintings of hockey scenes; dragging in a whole new audience into their world.

“No stories without data, and no data without stories” is a great rule of thumb. But it is not a law.

However, a revolution is brewing. More and more providers are slipping into the Twenty-First Century quietly and without fanfare. They are figuring out how to deliver care that is not only medically superior but is operationally modern as well.

These insights give me great joy as a thinking person. They give me great pain as a designer and leader. It means that in 2012 our jobs are much harder and more exciting. If you like a complex system, this is eureka. For most, it’s heartburn.