This Is Going To Hurt

“This is going to hurt.” It’s not exactly the kind of thing you want to hear your professor say, especially at MIT, where, if I’m being honest, I didn’t belong in the first place.

The professor was Edward Crawley, who led Systems Architecture and helped shape NASA’s plans for human spaceflight. He wasn’t joking. “This class is going to hurt your brain. You’re going to have to think in new ways.” He explained how we would learn to think in systems to break anything down: a sailboat, a large company, an interplanetary travel plan, a pencil. Anything made of interconnected parts with relationships between them.

For every part we would define its purpose: why it exists, what you hope to achieve if you’re successful. Then you define the strategy: what it takes to meet that outcome. Finally, the specific tactics and technologies it uses to employ the strategy. That’s the whole thing. We would break systems down for an entire semester. It was only in the semester after, with a little break to let our brains recover, that we would learn to build things back up.

Professor Crawley then put a picture of a corkscrew up on the screen. “What is the purpose of this?” he asked. “To pull a cork out of a wine bottle,” said one ambitious engineer. “No,” said the professor bluntly. The engineer’s face dropped. “Why would you want to pull a cork from a wine bottle?” Professor Crawley asked. “To remove the cork.” Not quite. “To access the wine,” another student responded. Now we’re getting closer. “To enjoy life!” joked one classmate from the back. Everyone laughed, but it was getting closer to the point. We were getting to the real intent. It wasn’t about the corkscrew at all. It was about the benefits that the corkscrew enabled.

With the outcome defined we switched to the strategy. “What’s the strategy of the corkscrew?” we were asked. We discussed how it pierces the cork with a sharp helix (“No, that’s a solution”). Then we discussed how it uses a pull-and-twist force to remove the cork. The pull-and-twist approach is the strategy. “But,” said Professor Crawley, “that’s just one of many.” The room started throwing out others. What about pushing and twisting? What about air pressure? Someone talked about “the shoe method,” placing a shoe over the bottle and slamming it against the wall to create a high-pressure wave that dislodges the cork. What about piercing the bottle itself? Another student talked about sabers, ceremoniously slicing the top of the bottle with a sword. We learned to write it as a sentence: “To (desired outcome) by (strategy) using (solution).” To access the wine by pulling-and-twisting using a corkscrew. The more strategies Professor Crawley pushed us to find, the more the solutions flowed. Sure, some of these were impractical and absurd, but with each new strategy defined, it unlocked dozens of new ideas within it. Some were familiar, but others were unexpected. Before we knew it we had a full map of ways to open a wine bottle, ranging in familiarity and ambition, all organized in a structured fashion.

It felt like learning a foreign language as my brain painfully rewired to this new way of thinking. But this wasn’t engineering. It was a creative act. Maybe I had engineering all wrong. Maybe I still didn’t belong, but I was sure glad to be there, as I felt like I was in on some hidden secret.

I was taking those courses while working full time at MITRE, and I didn’t fit neatly anywhere. In the engineering and management classes I was the designer. Then I’d walk over to the Media Lab and I was a systems engineer in a room full of artists. Yet over time I saw that the space between those rooms was where the interesting work was.

The companies I admired most designed that way. Apple most famously worked at “the intersection of technology and the liberal arts,” with integrated hardware and software. Engineering and design. Technology, people, and business were woven together from the start. I became obsessed with the idea that this holistic, multidisciplinary, and integrated approach is what separates good companies from great ones. It was systems thinking, just not in those words.

It became my thesis work: systems thinking applied to user experience design. After citing countless examples of success being tied to the underlying principles of systems thinking, I dedicated the back half to my favorite tool, ToByUsing.

Soon after MIT I went to a startup called APX Labs to lead UX and design research, where we used the method to build a first-of-its-kind industrial smart glasses software platform. From there I went to Jibo in a similar role, where we used ToByUsing to define the experience for the first social robot for the home. At Bose our vision team employed it for almost a decade, to the point where we just internalized it in how we organized and explored ideas.

In many ways, ToByUsing is the basis for the innovation practice I run today. I try to pass on the secret as it was taught to me. It’s hard to explain, as it is not a process as much as a framework for thinking. It’s both art and science. It can be hard to wrap your head around at first. So before every session, I tell the room the same thing Professor Crawley told us.

“I’m sorry, but this is going to hurt.”