We all know that asking the right questions at the right time can be transformational. We’ve seen it happen dozens of times in our work, and hopefully, we’ve also done it ourselves as Designers. Prompts can be a gentler way of questioning people, behaviors, and routines that once uttered, can yank us from the status quo mindset and seed in us a new way and perspective of the challenges we face.
Transcript
Paulo 0:03
Hey, my name is Fabio and you're listening to the designer dao. This is a place where we talk about everything web and Design. Today, we're here with my good friend Ray, Ernie. And we're going to talk about design for web three, for Dows, how to do that? And re, what? How do you want to start this off?
Ray 0:38
Well, as you know, I've been thinking a lot about prompts. Those small little questions that, when asked, kind of reshape, have the potential to reshape our lens. And so I've been, I was told that I sat down one day. And it's funny because I thought it would have been a tough task to write out prompts. But within 10 minutes, I'd written over 100 prompts in the Excel spreadsheet. And actually, one of my favorite prompts is what comes easy today? And that that activity came easy in that moment. And now I have this like a catalog of prompts that I frequently look at and call upon. And, we were chatting about, like, physical versus digital. And so I've printed out some prom cards on my desk. I thought we could do one if you would like,
Paulo 1:50
Yes, please. I just wanted to say I'm pretty pumped about this, as I've witnessed your skills in facilitating moments with people. And I think I've seen a few of those prompts. And I'm always struck by how they stop you in your tracks and make you think about what you're doing.
Ray 2:17
So let's do it,
Ray 2:18
go. And I have, I want to know, I have a wonderful person in my network, who I connect with every two weeks, and they have the best prompts. And if you don't, if you have if you don't have that, I recommend seeking out a human or whatever could be a deck of cards or whatnot. But I find humans are wonderful because you can share context with them, and they'll pull out from their catalog of prompts that just reshape your day. And so, a lot of my inspiration comes from them. Okay, so the prompt I have in front of me is, and also I'll just preface this, you don't have to answer the prompt. It is not a test; it is not a performance, and there is no grading. What I have found with these prompts is I don't know the answer right away. And that's okay. And that probably speaks to the prompt, right? Because it's, like, shifts, you, and you're like, Oh, I have to think about that one. So the prompt in front of me is what might get you closer to your purpose today.
Paulo 3:50
Huh? Yeah, you don't need to answer it, right? You just need to read it and reflect on it.
Ray 4:01
And it will ruminate in your head. Your energy might organically move you to things that get you closer to your purpose. So that's the prompt from the deck.
Paulo 4:17
Yeah. In that prompt, I think it's interesting to try to define what your purpose is. I'm not sure if most people have a ready-made definition that they can pull out when they're asked What's your purpose in here? Yeah, that's a good prompt.
Ray 4:41
And that act of reflecting on Hey, what is my purpose might be the thing that gets you closer to your purpose today. So yeah, I agree. I think sometimes. It's funny. We think, hey, what's the purpose of the brands that we interface with regularly and are constantly telling us what their purpose is, right? I think of brands like Nike or Apple or Tesla or whatever. And if I'm like, hey, what's Tesla's purpose? Like, boom, I can tell you right away, right? And then it's like, Hey, what's your purpose? And it's like, oh, yeah, I spend time thinking about that. And so I find that fascinating that we are so connected to the purpose of brands, Still, we spend very little time thinking about our purpose, or purpose or even asking, and I love this about prom cards, you get to ask people questions that you otherwise wouldn't feel comfortable asking, like, Hey, what is your purpose? Like? What does drive you right? Asking that of people around you and being able to connect that way?
Paulo 6:01
Yeah, it's a just out of the gate, starting with one of those things. One of those questions is, it helps to have an excuse, like, Oh, it is a prompt of the quarter. But they are useful in it sync with the utility of good questions and good prompts right at the right time. And sometimes, you face a question in a particular moment, but you don't, you know, care about it. But then the same question in a different moment makes all the sense and makes you reconsider what you're trying to do.
Ray 6:43
I know that design; we probably have a lot of designers listening. I'd say does that, like excellent designers? Ask the most wonderful questions. Yeah, a great signal of, of experience is the types of questions that people ask.
Paulo 7:06
Yeah. And an in a bunch of situations, they don't need, and they don't even need to be wonderful questions. They, they can be, you know, rough questions are not so fleshed out. But if they're asked in a particular moment in a particular way, they still invoke the change that maybe we want to invoke. Yeah, the power of asking questions is, it's really, really, really big. I wanted to talk to you about the speed of design and the common perception that there is out there, that you need to move fast and break things, and you need to iterate and be agile, and, you know, all those buzzwords, you're not going to try to, to drop anymore. And I've wanted to talk to you about that. Because every time I've worked with you, I've noticed that you usually bring a sense of awareness about what people are doing. And you ask wonderful questions by saying things to the, like, are we? Are we working towards solving a root cause or root problems? For example? Do we think about outcomes instead of outputs? So those kinds of questions and prompts that I've seen you do usually put up the brakes on the speed at which people are trying to do stuff. And they want everything done for tomorrow and as fast as possible. And we need to do this because there are competitors doing the same, but while we're in, sometimes your prompts basically put the brakes on that and force people to reflect on what they're doing and if it's the right thing or not. And at least from my experience working with you, every time we've done it, the outcome of that conversation has been better than if we reflect on it. So I guess my question is, how do you sense that the group of people that are trying to collaborate is maybe not going to not going down the right path, maybe there are some stones unturned maybe there are some more things to reflect on. in Odoo, you start the process of getting that group of people to find out the root cause of their troubles.
Ray 10:11
Right? Yeah. I think one of one of the things that I noticed in myself and others is we get super excited about solutions. We come to the table, saying, here's what we need to do, right? And you get a group of people together, let's say five, just for an example. And they all are coming. And it's funny. I related a lot to therapy because in couples therapy if you'll notice that couples come to the table with solutions, and they want the therapist to pick the one. That's right. Right. And I think the same is with facilitation a group will come to the table and be like, we can't decide on what the right path forward is. And we need a facilitator to help us argue it out in a way where we're not being violent. Because that probably has happened, and people's feelings have gotten hurt. And so they come to the table, and they're like, Okay, facilitator, help us decide on the solution that is the right solution. And whenever that framing happens, which I'd say is like, 99.9% of the time, I immediately ask, what's the problem? I want a simple prompt. Like, what is the problem? What is the problem you are trying to solve? And again, 99.9% of the time, the five people will see the problem differently. Oh, our competitors are catching up, and we need to release more stuff. Otherwise, they'll take our customer base. Okay, cool. So someone else might say, Our employees are unhappy, or our members in the Dow are unhappy, and a lot of them are engaging or going off to other doubts; we need to do more stuff for them. And they'll all say, like, different problems. And so that leads Well, that's an eye-opening experience for them. And right away, right? Oh, we can agree on a solution because we're all looking at different problems. But then I think from there; it's helping the group, like, hey, no, it's okay, that we're all seeing different problems. But if we dug deep into some of these, could we find common root problems? And that's as simple as just asking why right? Like, what is our hypothesis on our competitors catching up? Or what is our hypothesis on our members being disengaged? And, you know, in root cause analysis, the cliche is to ask why five times, and you'll get pretty close. But I think what I noticed is ask why and enough, and you'll start to see the roots spread out to those problems that that group has outlined, that feel very different. And, you're, you have a wonderful aha moment in problem-solving when five people come to the table all think a problem differently, all having different solutions in their head, and then get to a common root problem. And as well we can wrap our heads around this and solve this together. We don't have to fight we can, we can have a common ground, and as we all agree, this is a problem. And then, we can work together to run experiments on how to solve. And ideally, this is a problem that's like, Hey, I have no idea how to solve it because that's the truth.
Ray 14:12
The truth is,
Ray 14:13
we have no idea how to solve problems. The solution in our head is wrong. And we just don't know it until we implement it. So having them move to then an experimental mindset. And think about how we can do things to learn and I think, you know, to your point of move fast break things and agile and all those kinds of things. I think that rooted in something that I believe in but as often gets lost, because we just read the words and think like, oh, okay, we all kind of interpret them. It's like just just get shit done. and get getting shit done equals good. But when we think about like experiments, oftentimes, people another problem that I like is when someone says, oh, we could run this, we could do this. And I asked, okay, how long do you think that might take? And they're like, oh, probably a quarter, probably a couple months. And that's like, okay, let's create a container, what might we learn in a week? Or a day? And they look at me like, Oh, no. Like, that doesn't sound like a good idea. But if you can get them to a place where they're ideated, someone might, someone else might say, Oh, we could do this. Right, like, and then and then the light bulbs kind of go on. It's like, Oh, okay. Yeah, like if our goal is to learn versus solve, right, if our goal is to learn instead of solve, we can actually move in a way faster, but it feels more gentle, more compassionate, more humane?
Paulo 16:11
Yeah. Yeah, I think I think everybody woods, everybody listening to that approach, with I have a really hard time trying to disprove it, because it sounds like the best approach of doing things. And I imagine that all of us have been in situations where we wish people had stopped for a bit and reflect on, are we really solving a problem that exists? Do you really have a good understanding of what problem we're trying to solve is, and also the courage to face that reality of Oh, them, we were thinking about something completely off, compared to what we now understand to be the root cause of this problem, right? Because usually what happens when you do root cause analysis that you can come up to a problem that is very different and not solved, not solvable with the solution that you had in mind, for a more superficial problem, right. And I think it takes courage, either individual courage or collaborative courage for a group to face that and to say, oh, then we're going down the wrong path. And we're glad we caught ourselves and reframed but we're trying to do and, and have a better understanding of a problem. And now we're thinking about solutions to solve this problem, right. And this is something you could do again, and again, and, and usually it leads to better outcomes. But I would say that not every human being is in a place, either emotionally, or physically, or in whatever they mentioned, to be able to do that. Right. Sometimes we deal with other humans in our work where maybe they don't want to reframe the problem, maybe they don't want to waste time, going backwards to see if, if, if they're solving the right thing or not. Maybe they're super convinced that this is the right thing to solve. Right. And I think I think there's, there's a there's a type of emotional availability that is required to be able to do this kind of thing. And not everybody is available for the, let's say,
Ray 19:01
Yeah, I think compassion for yourself and for others, that can be helpful in those situations. I've been in cases where, you know, leading product teams, your your product managers, and your engineering team want to get to the root root causes, because, you know, they're, it's their energy that gets exerted to solve for these things that are getting pushed down to them, in some cases, from marketing or from sales. And sales team might say, hey, we, you know, we really want to close this customer and they want this feature, and we need to put it on the roadmap ASAP. And I think the thing is in web three as well. Where like, there will be people of influence or someone who sees a particular problem and says like, hey, we really need this. And I want you know, I'm going to fund it or whatnot. And then. But then in your head, you're thinking, Oh, but that doesn't sound like the root problem to solve that just sounds like a symptom to something else. But that actually, when you dig into it, it's whose problem because they salesperson saying, this customer has a problem, we really need to solve it ASAP. Like, we need to go fast. And when you dig in and ask them, Why, why, why why I have a sales quota to hit, and we need to hit it in two weeks. And you're like, Ah, okay, cool. That's the root problem, right? That's the thing that's driving that desire from moving quickly. And so now you get to go to the table and say, hey, could we put that problem on the table? And bring certain folks are in, you know, a diverse group, hopefully, like, how might be solved that? And just just to explore if there's any other opportunities? And most of the time, they're like, Yeah, okay, cool. As long as we're talking about, like, the thing that's keeping me up at night, which actually isn't this feature that needs to get released, but it's this quota that needs to get hit. And then you can actually collaborate, because you're talking about the same problem.
Paulo 21:23
Yeah, but it takes this almost like unfolding all the way years, to get to the root cause, right. And in the is felt compassion.
Ray 21:37
Because if you don't have it, I think it makes it harder to take the time to really better understand like, what is going on at the root of this person who maybe is saying, like, we got to move fast, we got to move fast and break stuff. Like I just wish like, someone was around these people who decided that was a thing that they should do, and was compassionate enough to be like, hey, what's what's going on what's driving this, like, energy towards getting shit done quickly, in a, in a way that could be hazardous to self and others. And I wonder what might have been uncovered? If, if they had that opportunity?
Paulo 22:30
Yeah, and, and as designers we are used to, or we should be used to fight for having empathy for the users. And sometimes, we forget that we should also have empathy for our colleagues and collaborators. And I am hearing that the compassion that you're talking about, in a certain ways, also having empathy about, oh, this product manager that I'm dealing with, or this engineer that I'm dealing with, or whatever it is, is also going to stuff and he's also as his own motivations and his own incentives at play. And as a as someone that a designer that uses empathy to relate to us to users and customers and try to design the best thing for them, we should also maybe do more about, do more of that for for our, for the people that we work with, to also try to understand where they're coming from and why they are pushing what they're pushing. Especially when what they're pushing goes against our interests, because it is pretty easy to have empathy for others when you agree with them. But it's not so easy to have empathy for others when you disagree with them. But that's the one that really counts actually, I would say,
Ray 24:01
Yeah, and just to follow up on the story of like, we need to put this on the roadmap to close his client. That is that he this actually happened, we sat down we had a bunch of stakeholders from different departments. And we actually came up with a strategy to close the customer without building anything. And it just required a better understanding and a team effort right, which is I think what the this person in this department was struggling with was they felt alone on this journey. Where it says hey, you know what, let's let's actually engage with the customer learn, let's build trust. Let's record Let's share our design process with them and get feedback on that something that the sales are the other person and I'm trying to relate it to Dallas because I also think is related to Dallas as well. Is that you have All these different people with different experiences and different perspectives. But sharing that our design process was not in the competence realm of the salesperson, right? And they didn't even know to come to us and be like, Hey, can you share, like how we design products and the organization because I think it's going to close this customer they didn't, that's not their realm, their realm is solid roadmap, get to get customers. And so just by doing that, you can then allow for doing it in a way that again, feels more gentle and more compassionate, up more focused on the root problems.
Paulo 25:43
Yeah. Yeah, I've seen you facilitate a bunch of workshops over the past year. And I wanted to talk to you about what it takes to facilitate a workshop successfully. And from the point of view of the facilitator, what should be the mindset and approach to doing that, and I'm asking you, because I think you're a good example of doing it. Gently, I think it's exactly what I want to use. But still, maybe surprising to some getting results. In the end.
Ray 26:36
I think in any, I'll just have a caveat, like the workshops that I I feel comfortable facilitating are ones where they're the groups has a has a relationship with each other. So it's not a bunch of people who don't yet know each other, I think that if they don't yet know each other, that's probably a problem worth solving first. And usually about five to eight people, I think once you start to get more than that, it starts to get difficult in terms of participation and diverse participation. I think about when entering a facilitation, engagement, the beginning and the end, because you're going on a journey together, you're you're starting at a place, and you're going to end at a place. Right. And I think as long as you don't end the place he started, then something happened in that session that move people, right,
Paulo 27:40
that's, that's a, that's a beautiful way to put it. And it's, it kind of takes off the the, you know, this overwhelmingness of facilitating workshop, right, because some people that are thinking about facilitating a workshop, they maybe overthink it, and maybe try to, you know, plan everything and try to account for all the variables. But honestly, just like you said, you're going on a journey together. And really, the only thing that matters is that you don't end up exactly where you started. Because if you don't, then you have progress, you can you can end a little bit backwards from where it started. Or you can hand a little bit forwards. And when you started, for sure. But either way, it's a journey where people discover stuff. So it's a it's I think it's a good way of framing it so that it takes the edge of this overwhelmingness that it is sometimes to do a workshop.
Ray 28:46
Yeah, I think the hardest part can be helping others who might have strong opinions on where they want to be by the end of it. And, and sometimes that doesn't happen, right? Like I've run workshops, where someone has a strong opinion that like by the end of this workshop, we should have x, y, z, and we should be taking action on on all this and we should have alignment. Everyone should be thinking the thing, right, I think that's usually usually what this person is looking for. It's like everyone should be on my page and think the same way as me by the end of this workshop so that we can actually do things because we're not doing things enough. We're not doing enough things.
Paulo 29:36
And it is a real danger when that person is one with the most authority in the group and and the one that's facilitating the workshop and so on. Of course
Ray 29:45
keeping it keeping that person in mind again, being compassionate, trying to better understand like, what is driving this, this person's needs, right. And usually there's some think that they're holding within themselves. Because I think in the, in the past, I probably wasn't very compassionate to those people, I was just like, Get out the way you're ruining everything kind of deal. But actually, when I have compassion for these people, and really try to better understand what's driving it, usually they're trying to protect the group from some pressure that they're holding internally. And they're really scared about it. And that's what's driving this, like, we need to get shit done. And if we can bring that out from them, right. Because, as a facilitator, I'm always looking for tension. That like, you look for tension, and then you can try to go into it as much as you can, right. And so
Ray 30:56
that's why I like doing online. I found having the camera on can be helpful. listening to people's voice, like how they're saying things, or if they haven't said things in a while.
Ray 31:13
Or even mural I find mural fascinating, because sometimes you can see like behavior on the board itself, where you're like, Oh, that one, that sticky there, that keeps getting moved around or rewarded or different colors, different tags. That let's let's hone in on that thing. Because that feels like there's something there that if said out loud, would benefit the group. And so that person can bring a lot of great tension, even with myself, because they want to go fast. And I'm trying to slow things down. It's like, okay, can we take a minute just to better understand what is driving this desire for everyone to think the same way so that things can get done, done in quotation marks? A lot, a lot of but yeah, thinking about the beginning and the end itself? Well,
Paulo 32:17
if that was something that I think, is the core of doing things together with people, which is to sort out the tensions. And, again, it's something that I think needs the participants to have the courage to share it even because sometimes you're working in an environment where it's not safe to share some tension, right? Yeah. And I believe it's the role of the facilitator to make that space and make that environment welcoming to the sharing of tension,
Ray 32:58
and how much a facilitator can do. Right, so you're facilitating at a specific point in time, you have a container. And so you, you, as a facilitator, you want to spend as much time thinking about how do I create as much safety as possible in this container. But at the end of the day, if someone feel if someone doesn't feel safe, entering the container, and then exiting the container, they will be thinking about, like, what is life going to be like, once this container dissolves? Right?
Paulo 33:38
I'm gonna be repercussions.
Ray 33:41
But there are techniques, right, there are things like creating container control, creating a anonymous feedback mechanism within this session, right. So using another tool on the side, and letting people know, if you're not comfortable sharing in a way where your name is tied to things, please share here and keeping an eye on those types of things as well. There are tensions that could come up where you are completely unequipped to dive into it, or you know that if you did, it's, you know, you have five people on the call, and it's going to really be a session with just two people if we dive into that tension, and you want to make sure that everyone is engaged. So kind of recognizing, recognizing that is also an art form.
Paulo 34:36
Yeah, that intuition of facilitator is, is really, I believe something that is only, you know, trained by experience, so to say, oh, and to be in to be open to sense people and different types of people in different types of contexts and different types of situations and And now they might, or they might behave. But why is this? Is this thing important? Why is it important to flesh out? The tensions within the group?
Ray 35:18
That's a great question. Why is it important?
Paulo 35:28
Well, I think
Ray 35:29
most ideas fail in the market, right? Most things will not be valuable to the audience that you want it to be valuable to? I would say I'll just reframe it, it's actually not important to flesh out tensions depending on the outcome you want. Right? And so I think this is why some of those product visionaries are heralded and like seen as like, well, they just came into a room and said, we need to do this. And then they did it. And then they sold like a bunch of product, and why can't we just operate like that, right. And I would say, if you want to go build a product for yourself, like you are the target user, and you are, you know, you feel really confident that you know, a bunch of people just like you, who could get value from the thing you're trying to build. Tension might not be that helpful, right? Because it's like, you know, what you need, and you know, what that group of people need. And so really, what you're looking for maybe is a bunch of people just to build something that you don't have the capability to build yourself, and you want to build it for you. And you want to build it for a bunch of friends and people who look and sound just like you, right? But if you're trying to build something that is for a diverse group of people, or maybe a group of people who are underserved in a market, then you actually don't know what to build yet, or do yet. And I think that's where attention on a product design perspective. Makes sense. Because you want to get into the the aha moments, I think, live in the person who sees things differently, and can work with another person who sees things differently, to find a creative solution that can hold both things true. That's usually like where innovation comes, right? It's like, Can two conflicting ideas actually be true? Can I fit 1000 songs in my pocket? You know, there's a tent that at some point in time, that was a tension, right? There were people who were like, No way, that's impossible. And they're, you know, you're talking like battery life, you're talking about size, a device, you're talking about price point, all these kinds of things, right? And so instead of ignoring all those things, bring those tensions in and be like, can we hold those as truth, what like what would allow those things to actually be mitigated, because they're all important. They're all perspectives. They're important. The fact that you even believe I feel so strongly about it tells me that you know, enough to potentially go out on software. So I think that's why tension is important when we think about product to my point around, like, if you're building something for yourself, and a bunch of people who look like you, and you just want and you feel really confident about like, here's the roadmap, here's how it should be designed, here's how it should be looked, all that kind of stuff. That's great. You're going to hire people, you're going to bring people or you're going to maybe create a Dhow, you're going to have members come in. And then you're going to have tension around how we build stuff, how much people get paid, how meetings are conducted. Because you are not a bunch of people who all look the same and act the same. And so you will have to problem solve for diverse groups of people, no matter what your organization is. And again, that's where you'll seek tension as well. And just on it SitePoint something interesting when facilitating it sometimes you'll come in and be like, here's the problem. For example, our product quality isn't where it needs to be. There's too many people calling support or Yeah, and and then you dig into the roots and the roots is actually compensation. And then like what it is like, yeah, like if you actually solve for how people are incentivized and compensated, the quality of your product will go up. And it's like, oh, okay, yeah. Let's go. So for that,
Paulo 40:22
hopefully, yeah. But yeah, I do think there's a very knit tight knit relationship between finding gold's let's call it in a in a collaborative environment, and embracing the tension between the participants, because as you said, the tension and the friction between two people that think differently, but they still figuring out a way to accomplish both of their wants is where a great innovation comes from. And if that's true, then one, we need people that think differently, so we need diverse groups of people. And just that is a whole, you know, challenge in itself, because as we all know, nowadays is not so easy to get to people that are sufficiently diverse. And another point is that every voice matters. So you, you would need to listen to everybody in the group. And even the quietest person would probably have an opinion, that's different from everybody. And that's exactly what they need to listen. And as a facilitator, you should give a voice to that person or, or ask them to, to share, so that the whole group takes advantage of it and learns from that. And so all these things build up on top of each other. And it's almost as if, in the end, we are in the situation where, yeah, if you really want to innovate and create great things, you need to optimize for diversity, you need to optimize for tension, and you need to seek those things, and have them play out in the world in the gentlest, and gentle way possible that you can muster and manage to do. And I really do think that's the promise of web three and Dow's in a way, which is, we are starting from a starting point where it is more likely that all voices are weak or equal in when three or more voices should be heard in referee, and not so much in the corporate world. And so I think that's a better starting point for innovation, for some problems, at least. And there's a skill set that I think is missing, which is, how do we facilitate all this from happening, right? And that's where good facilitation comes in. And good collaborative workshops come in, and all those good stuff that we, that we try to do. But it is I think, true that true innovation comes from people disagreeing with each other and trying to work that out. In, in, we should we should create those moments, we should create those spaces and where that can happen more often than not, and we should not shy away from doing that.
Ray 43:41
I mean, look, like you look at I think it'd be a wonderful exercise is probably to look at innovations and ask what were the what were the things that were typically seen as untrue in terms of if one exists, the other cannot. And the What the what, how it broke the mold, how it was how it did both? Right. And I think you know, Tesla with electric cars, wonderful job in terms of before that, if you said I'm going to build electric car is like, Oh, that's a niche, hippie, very expensive, low range type of product, because that's typically what they were before that. And it's not easy electric cars were not sexy. And no one thought they ever could be right and how I look at it is like it's completely change the script and I think that's what innovation. I think, again, a wonderful exercise would be to look at look at your favorite products, look at your favorite innovations and ask like what were the things that before this were seen as binary like if you will Want to dissected the car? It wouldn't be a muscle car with a big engine. Everyone had a practical car? It would be a small a minivan or, or something else right? And then now the plaid test the Model X or whatever and it's like well, you can you can have a car that can out beat a Bugatti a billion $100 million car and in it a family sedan. Yeah,
Paulo 45:29
yeah. And it doesn't it doesn't pollute the environment while driving. Yeah. Yeah, again, I think I think that's the that's the core of it. And I think it was it needs a certain attitudes in trying to seek discomfort trying to seek attention, trying to lay it out, laid out at least.
Ray 45:58
Just thinking out loud, I think one of the hardest things about it is the people who don't think it's possible are probably the people who are most equipped to make it possible. Because the people who are saying, Oh, no, that's not possible. You ask them why they're gonna outline all the thing, all the details on why that's not possible, right? They're still well versed on the thing. They're just their minds that it's towards, here's how it won't work. And if you just said, a prompt, like, Okay, how might it work? Like, if I was just to frame it, like, how might it work? Like, I'm not saying it will. But if you were to do it, like, how might you do it? Right. And I think if you just again, we're thinking about prompts, if you were able to prompt these people just think in the inverse in a safe way. Because chances are these people don't feel safe to fail. Safe to look stupid, right? Which is why it's easier to point out all the things that won't that won't work, because, yeah, cool. I could tell you a million ways how not to swing a golf club. And I'll be right. But if you can give those people the the the ability to feel safe, while exploring something that is likely really, really, really, really hard. There are the right people to be honest.
Paulo 47:38
Yeah. And sometimes when that journey happens, it's wonderful to see. off half way along the way, their eyes start to shine and say, Oh, damn, maybe. And then they're the most motivated people to make it happen. And that's, that's, that's, that's that is proof to the power of did prompt in the right way in the right moment. Yeah, because it's not it's not that it's the prompt that creates the knowledge, right? It's not the case. But it can be the prompt that unlocks the knowledge and unlocks the insight and unlocks the secret that we need to solve it. Right? And if the prompt is done in the right way, in the right time, the right person, the right context, in the right space, which is a lot of variables they can take. But if it is, then you're you're unlocking magic. Yeah.
Ray 48:43
And just for folks listening is like, it could be you. You could be the person who thinks something is so impossible, right? And if you were to list out, like all the reasons why something won't work, right, like a wonderful exercise. If you're thinking oh doubts this, this space, where like, there's no titles, and people can enter and exit freely. And ownership is very liquid, all the and you're like that will never work. Awesome. list out all the ways that won't work. And then ask like, how might it like? Are the are each of these things, solvable problems or unsolvable problems? The fact that you were able to list out in such clarity and such high conviction, what they are means you're really close to the problems and you've seen them. But is what what the shift just the help push shift is to then just be like, how might it work? What would cause it to work? And that cause might not be like, happening now. We might have to wait for that cause to happen in the future or we might have to be the catalyst of that cause right But I can tell you a lot of things can happen that we do not expect to happen. And that becomes the unlocking for capabilities in our society. And I think it you know, five years ago, we said, we're all going to experience a, a life threatening virus around the world that will shut down most institutions. You're like, no, but if you said like, if that were to happen, what might that unlock? Them people actually designing for? A something where it brings people together in a collective like understanding of this is a common problem no matter where you live. Yeah, what would what capabilities might come out of that? So? Yes, things might not be possible today, thinking about what might make them possible in the future, thinking about how we might be able to capitalize that or wait for it, and see if it happens, but then we'll be ready. can be a wonderful exercise.
Paulo 51:14
Yeah, it's almost as if the master prompt of them always, how might we? Blah, blah, blah, right? , as designers, we've, we've probably
Ray 51:29
I challenge us, maybe other people listening, to pick something we feel so strongly about; that is not possible, right? Could be like Democrats and Republicans getting along. Or it would be like something really like your visceral, right? Pick something that you just think like is impossible, or even like getting along with your parents or siblings or family? Do the things, or it's just like, list out all the reasons why it's probably a quite an easy exercise to do. And then, and then use that prompt that you just said, like how might it work? Who you would like explore that space? How might it work? And see if you can give yourself the space and the gentleness and compassion to just put some things on the table and see how how they make you feel?
Paulo 52:19
Yep. I'm sure everybody can think about examples in their own life. Is that about and use that prompt to unlock something, hopefully, and even if it doesn't unlock, just the act of reflecting on it might be helpful. And yeah, I think we got a good sense of the power prompts and asking great questions right time, and having a gentle attitude towards solving problems and exploring tensions with my good friend Raikkonen, so see you next time.
Ray 53:04
Thank you. Appreciate you. Thank you.
Prompts and Reflections <> Ray Kanani