My learnings from Deloitte Doblin's case competition to re-imagine the in-person experience at the Toronto Public Library.
After an exciting experience collaborating with my peers in Ivey Design Week, I had the opportunity to lead my group through the innovation process at the three-day Deloitte Innovation Forum in April 2019. We were provided 4 guiding questions to assist us in the process:
Day One: Discovery
We conducted interviews with people we knew, ourselves, as well as many strangers in London, ON to learn about the relationships between people, libraries and physical space. We prepared open-ended questions and dug deep (without judgment) in our conversations in order to uncover hidden insights from our interviewees; all of whom signed consent forms before participating in our research.
Getting to Know People:
Why are you here?
What do you like to do in your free time?
Outside of work/school and home, where do you spend the most time?
Why do you go to those places?
Do you have any passions or hobbies that you wish you could do more of?
Where is somewhere you like to go to be creative?
Where is somewhere you like to go to be curious?
What do you like to do in your free time?
Outside of work/school and home, where do you spend the most time?
Why do you go to those places?
Do you have any passions or hobbies that you wish you could do more of?
Where is somewhere you like to go to be creative?
Where is somewhere you like to go to be curious?
Learning/Reading:
What does learning mean to you?
Where do you do most of your learning?
What are you interested in learning more about?
What’s the best way for you to learn something?
Throughout your life, how has the way you learned new things changed?
What does learning mean to you?
Where do you do most of your learning?
What are you interested in learning more about?
What’s the best way for you to learn something?
Throughout your life, how has the way you learned new things changed?
Library-specific:
What do you think of when you hear the word library?
Why do you use the library?
What don’t you like about the library?
What would make the library better?
What do you think of when you hear the word library?
Why do you use the library?
What don’t you like about the library?
What would make the library better?
From our questions, we uncovered the following insights:
Looking back, one form of observation that we had not taken into account was visiting an actual library. Our approach aimed to answer the question: "Why DON'T people go to the library?" but we missed the opportunity to understand why people DO go to libraries. Observing the activities, environments, interactions, objects, and users within a library would have proven beneficial.
Despite this, our research did uncover one clear orthodoxy: the library is a place for people to quietly read books or gather information, a relatively niche human need which can be easily met through a quick Google search. Therefore, our innovation would need to challenge this conventional wisdom of how people define a library.
We began asking ourselves: "how can a library better serve the needs of people"? We drew on our earlier insights from our findings interviewing strangers downtown and at the mall in order to begin ideating.
Day Two: Ideation
Now in reflection, I realize the above narrative doesn't align. We were trying to force the library to become an "anti-library" based on findings we uncovered from audiences that don't go to the library. However, we still didn't have any information from those that did go to libraries... we didn't even have a clear picture of what kind of people went to libraries!
As the team leader driving the discovery process, I had not considered the importance of framing. We didn't take into account the end-user, had not defined the user needs we were trying to meet, our constraints/scope, and we didn't have a clear definition of what "success" looked like.
Our concept transformed a library into a community hub with inspiration taken from our campus amenities. We arrived at this idea out of thin air. In hindsight, it would have been useful to consider Doblin's Ten Types of Innovation framework.
We needed to go for innovation, not invention.
A rule of thumb from the Doblin representatives was to spot at least 3-4 innovation types and include 1 from each colour category. Our research had focused into Offering (Product Performance and Product System), and Experience (Channel and Customer Engagement) but had not analyzed any Configuration types to provide us design criteria useful for framing.
We may have considered the Desirability of the concept but we did not consider Feasibility or Viability. Looking through our old work documents, our team had recognized this problem but attempted to address the risk by specifying this innovation as a long-term "aspirational" target to be launched in 2070.
Day Three: Pitch
Despite our mistakes in Part One and Two, my team knocked our pitch out of the park! We had clear answers to our 4 guiding questions.
1) We learned that libraries were conventional wisdom for "a quiet place to read books"
2) We identified a human need: "people don't have a place to do all things they want to do"
3) Our proposed solution addressed this human need by transforming the library into "a place to go"
4) Our solution was unique and distinctive because it offered a long-term innovation objective that would redefine what a library means to people: "a place for learning, discovery and community to do the things you want to do"
2) We identified a human need: "people don't have a place to do all things they want to do"
3) Our proposed solution addressed this human need by transforming the library into "a place to go"
4) Our solution was unique and distinctive because it offered a long-term innovation objective that would redefine what a library means to people: "a place for learning, discovery and community to do the things you want to do"
We built a paper-cardboard prototype of the 5-level "Toronto Public Learning Center" and embedded virtual walk-through videos within our PowerPoint presentation to illustrate our concept to the judges. Another clear differentiator for us was the vlog documentation of our innovation journey, which clearly broke down why we were doing what we were doing.
Having the opportunity to lead my team through open-ended interviews with strangers, uncover human orthodoxies, conduct brainstorm sprints, document our journey, and build impressive pitch presentation was an incredibly rewarding experience to view my innovation and human empathy capabilities in action. One comment I received many times from my teammates was how much fun they had in the process.
If I were to do this again, I would include more exercises to warm-up my team for creativity while maintaining scope of the project's end-user objective by paying closer attention to Doblin's "10 Types of Innovation" framework. As a creative individual, I recognize that creativity needs constraints in order to become design that drives value for clients.