Changing mindsets, behaviors, and organizations are hugely challenging. Design presents a pathway for trying to do so. However, when considering the complexity of systems and all the elements associated with them, the challenge can seem overwhelming. People can either oversimply to the point where their approach is incomplete, or get stuck in the weeds to the extent that nothing gets done. To approach the challenge of systems design, we need to draw on a variety of inspirations and professions.

Being a physics teacher, a heavy metal aficionado, hockey player, cookie baker, rhetoritician has come together in interesting ways for our guest. Trying to teach high school students physics was good preparation for trying to keep the attention and reach executives. Heavy metal music allowed her to be sensitive to subtle aspects of a bigger sound. Hockey taught the concept of hard work and team work. Studying rhetoric gave her the understanding of how to communication information to people in ways that connect, along with diagnosing problems that people have when communicating with others. And cookies taught her the importance of …… cookies.

The key is to pull all of this together and integrate it into a workable framework that helps expand our capacity to understand and act. As we come to understand the importance of systems, we also understand that the challenges are bigger than any one perspective can understand or handle. This means that to handle bigger design problems, we need more integrated solutions.

Today on Experience by Design we have Jen Briselli, the Chief Design Strategy Officer at Mad*Pow, an experience design firm in New England. We explore how changing mindsets and “nudging” can be a key strategy to do so. We also discuss how communication and messaging is a key component to accomplishing behavioral changes. We need to know what makes people tick, what their goals are, and how to use the tools handed to them.

But we can’t do this in silos. To tackle the big challenges and wicked problems that we are facing, we need to combine our resources and work together. And ultimately, how keeping a beginner’s mind for every project keeps her engaged in her work and continuously learning.

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