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Adam Morris: Welcome to People Helping People, the podcast to help social entrepreneurs build a stronger business and have a greater impact. I'm your host, Adam Morris, and I'm excited to have a guest on today to talk about my favorite thing, using design thinking to create a better impact in the Tracy Brandenburg is a design thinking trainer who has taught executives at Stanford's d.school, pioneered three design thinking programs at Cornell, and trained startups and students in design thinking methodology that IDEO has built over 30 plus years. She's currently leading Reimagining the Rust Belt, a social innovation project in her hometown in Middletown, Ohio, and working with students at the Red Labs in Denison University. With that, let's dive in. Tracy, welcome on the podcast.
Tracy: Hi, Adam, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Adam Morris: ⁓ me too. I think this conversation has been a long time coming. And I'm really excited to explore design thinking and how it relates to supporting students in their ventures.
Tracy: Oh, well, it's my favorite topic. So glad you asked. So a little bit about design thinking. It's been around since like 1967 and from the engineers and product designers at IDEO And really saw the value of what students could do when I was visiting Stanford and learning design thinking myself. And it really gives them the power to uncover human needs on their own without having to use surveys or ask people, what do you need and what do you want? But it teaches them the ethnographic skills of how you go beneath the surface of a conversation or an observation. ultimately, ⁓ really them a new way to solve problems. And I think that's one of the greatest gifts that we can give them is the ability to solve problems creatively.
Adam Morris: did you first learn about design thinking? What got you into this field?
Tracy: Well, it really goes back to my sister. She's my mentor and my best friend is a very successful design thinker. She was the vice president of innovation strategy and design at P &G. ⁓ she said, you need to do design thinking. And I said, I don't design anything. And she said, trust me, you need to ⁓ that. You need to be there ⁓ the Stanford D School. me like three years to finally go out there and to study design thinking and I even texted a friend outside the door no idea why I'm here because I told her I study people. I don't do design. ⁓ And when I went to Stanford said, yeah, first things first, we study people. And I'm like, okay, that's why an anthropologist is here and fits in. So it really came from my sister Claudia Kachka. Check her out if you want to read about innovation and she's done some amazing things.
Adam Morris: Love that. And so your background was in anthropology, really studying humans and how to interact with humans.
Tracy: And I found myself because of that in all kinds of crazy situations. You know, I've been among an indigenous group in Mexico, the Zapotec. I spent time with substance abuse users in rural And I just consider, continue to be an anthropologist matter what I'm doing. I can't really turn it off.
Adam Morris: How does that tie in with design thinking? So you say it's about about humans, but how does that connect?
Tracy: ⁓ the first of design thinking is really empathy. Trying to feel how someone else feels. Trying to go beneath the surface and understand what motivates them. Why do they do what they do? And so every time I've been in a situation, whether it's among opioid users or people checking JetBlue Airlines and having difficulty with that because I worked with JetBlue, It's always the same. We're trying to improve the lives of others, yeah, really, that's ultimately what about.
Adam Morris: Now, if somebody is not empathetic, like as a person, that mean they can't be a design thinker?
Tracy: You know, I think that you can still learn about people. I think you can still observe behavior. You know, we did a project to study, when I was at Cornell, we studied ⁓ Ithaca, why there weren't students there, traffic there in this beautiful pedestrian area. And know, the students didn't really want to talk to people, didn't want to interview them, felt really uncomfortable with it. But there were other techniques they could do, like use photography. empathy or not, you can still study other people and their
Adam Morris: Got it. So empathy and design thinking doesn't mean all, I have to be an empathetic person who my heart goes out to everybody. But it's like that study of really understanding how another person is showing up in a situation.
Tracy: Exactly, exactly.
Adam Morris: Now, you got involved in this work at the D school. And then you went to Cornell and you developed programs around this. So you were working very closely with students and the application of design thinking. What did you learn from what students needed to know in order to apply design thinking effectively?
Tracy: Students tend to start with solutions. And we this project JetBlue to reimagine check-in for them. And an engineer on day was like, know the answer, before we even went out in the world. and studied people. if we can go from that solution-driven nature or habit, really, I think it's a habit, to where we're looking instead for juicy problems. We're looking, know, designers say, look for duct tape. Like anything that has to have duct tape on it is a design opportunity because there's something wrong with it.
Adam Morris: I think there's something here too of you've these programs with students over many, many years. How did that process come about?
Tracy: Yeah.
Adam Morris: but before you go deep in this, like I'm curious, you invited people over and you did design thinking exercises in your living room.
Tracy: in my living room on the floor. Yes, this is how I started.
Adam Morris: were those exercises like? What did that actually look like? ⁓
Tracy: ⁓ okay, so there are some games where you can simulate the entire design
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thinking experience in like an hour and a half. One of them is called the wallet game, where you practice designing a wallet for someone else. But first you have to get empathy and you have to listen to, ⁓ do a deep dive into their pain points. I think the one that I played was called the gift giving game and you have to design for your partner a new way to ⁓ give present. And so, and then you had to build the solution with craft supplies. So I went to Michael's and I had craft supplies on my floor and I had friends playing this game. Some of them are like, I have no idea what I was doing. But the really cool part was that a group of them said, "Hey, whatever you're doing seems cool. Can we, do you have more?" And so we started by solving problems just for practice. And then university departments like ⁓ architecture at Cornell said, you do something for us? I think I charged 60 bucks. then I know, and eventually word got to like deans that there's this lady on campus and she's doing this thing that has all our students excited. And so ⁓ I up being invited to ⁓ systems and then later to the ⁓ graduate school of management. But it all started in my living room with some popsicle sticks.
Adam Morris: I love that. that. Popsicle sticks and designing wallets. What were some of those early projects that you were doing? Like what did this look like when you were going into the university and being like, yeah, I want to do a project for you.
Tracy: "Well, you know, the first project, I believe they told me at Cornell you have one shot ⁓ because don't know what design thinking is, but you say it comes from engineering and it from mechanical engineering. so we'll give you a one shot. And I the group of students by bus to JFK to work in terminal five, which is JetBlue's ⁓ terminal. And we worked on re-imagining check-in. So that was one of the first challenges that I did. And it involved having, they gave us boarding passes to go through TSA for a flight that didn't exist. So I called it Destination Innovation. And it was really fun this is where students were very uncomfortable talking to people. And ⁓ so I had to point out say, that lady over there, go talk to her. And they were like, we don't want to. It was great.
Adam Morris: Well, I mean, just to draw parallels to entrepreneurs, think having customer conversations with people outside of your network is something that is very uncomfortable for somebody early stage. ⁓ And ⁓ were just like forcing students to go do that. But did you find anything ⁓ of like, hey, here's ways to ease that pain of getting out of your comfort zone?
Tracy: Right, right. ⁓ You know, I tried to teach them little tricks in terms of talking, if wearing a Cornell ID. They're just kind of things you can do to be less scary. People think you're either selling them a religion or cookies, and they just want to run. So you have to get in that word student really fast, because people like helping students. Hi, I'm a student. I'm taking
a class, and that can get you a conversation. Yeah.
Adam Morris: ⁓ I love that. Okay. So bridging for students to be able to show up as themselves so that people give them a break and, you know, aren't afraid that they're going to be converted to the religion is in the airport that people convert you to. So you went in there and you were doing this process, but if you had to describe the design thinking process as ⁓ it with this JetBlue project, like what components were there and how did that whole flow work for design thinking?
Tracy: Yeah. the first we do is we even question the question. So when they said, using design thinking, can you reimagine check-in us? I had to say, well, are you sure there's a problem with check-in? What's the problem with check-in? The funny thing is, is they said, Tracy, just watch. So, you know, I saw. people being kicked off of kiosks, people of all ages in case you thought, maybe some people aren't, you know, ready to use kiosks. But people of all ages were getting kicked off kiosks, lines were crazy, people were getting upset. I didn't know what was going on. But I set the students in to study this. And by having conversations with people and observing them, they came to learn of all kinds of different problems. It wasn't just a single airport ground service problem, but they met a single parent traveling with three little toddlers running around and how do you navigate the airport with three young children? ⁓ that's an example of someone that they designed for. They first bombed ⁓ designing a ⁓ that they came back with these physical prototypes and the mascot just terrified everybody. Their moms with their babies ran from it. ⁓ they had to reimagine everything on the spot and go back to the drawing board and they said, all right, let's try a scavenger hunt. So to keep the children occupied, there's a JetBlue checklist. You know, like put shoes on your tray. And so that the little kid is like, mom, it says we're supposed to do this next. And at the end, there's like a prize or a book. So this is sort of the process that we went through, but involved two trips to the airport a lot of customer interaction, which for ⁓ shy people who are used to like maybe just staying in their classroom, it was a little uncomfortable. ⁓
Adam Morris: Mm-hmm. So on that first trip, you were really developing that empathy, right? You were observing people's behaviors, what was going on. And it sounds like you went back and you did some brainstorming above ideas and solutions. You brought those back to actually validate and say, hey, is this what people needed? ⁓ And in that, you realized very quickly that a mascot was scary. So you pivoted and changed to something else. ⁓
Tracy: Mm-hmm. Exactly. Exactly. You're a good design thinker.
Adam Morris: Yeah. has been part of the Give Back Hack world and the social entrepreneurship world that I work at. So I'm always very curious of how to apply design thinking more effectively in entrepreneurship and solving problems. ⁓ So I'm passionate about this, but self-taught in a
Tracy: Right, right. we all kind of are. I if I started in my living room with some pipe cleaners, I was pretty much on my own to figure it out.
Adam Morris: that ⁓ really effective. It's like, okay, hey, for something like design thinking, it's something that you can learn by doing, right? You don't learn by just reading in a book.
Tracy: Yeah, totally. We always have there's a bias towards action. So we just start now rather than overthink things.
Adam Morris: So that kicked you off on your design thinking journey. then fast forward to today, you're working with Denison and the Red Labs and helping their entrepreneurs come together. How does ⁓ come into play for student entrepreneurs?
Tracy: the cool thing about design thinking is it can take you from observing a problem to studying, ⁓ you know, being human centered and studying the human behavior all way to ⁓ a functional prototype. And so is exactly what we want our to do. We want them to identify good problems, something that's really a pain point for people ⁓ then and test and be in constant communication with customers. This is what we teach in entrepreneurship and this is what we teach in ⁓ design thinking. we have workshops ⁓ at Denison design to practice solving a problem working in different teams having like five different solutions at the end. which is really nice. And it was just really helpful, I think, as we prepared people for the pitch competition to train them. And we even had them like exit the classroom on the spot and go and talk to people and dig deep for these questions and come back because they weren't doing it because they were too scared. So we had to like say, OK, right now you've got 30 minutes. and talk to people. Talk to your customers, always.
Adam Morris: it sounds like this has been a big barrier for students, just like actually getting out of their own comfort zone and talking to new
Tracy: I mean, very few people were willing to do it. And I think it's because, you know, we are, they've gone over the idea with their families and their friends who are going to say it's awesome because they're family and friends and we all support, you know, our loved ones ideas. But I wanted them to talk to people who didn't fit in that category. And that was really the scary part. is not knowing what people are going to say.
Adam Morris: you notice any change in the students as they started doing that? ⁓
Tracy: ⁓ I think they became confident, a lot of them became confident and just proud. And they would come and say, I talked to 10 people Tracy. So they were just really, you know, just proud that they were getting out there and doing that. It was cool.
Adam Morris: ⁓ Was there any other part of the design thinking process that was really challenging for students?
Tracy: I think that the most challenging thing is that, or happened, is that students showed up for entrepreneurship with an
already formed idea. And so ⁓ even we went out and we talked to people and we them the hard questions like, would you pay for this right now? ⁓ Are you to Venmo me right now for this idea? We would, you know, I would make sure that they asked the really hard question, you know, are people going to pay for this?
Adam Morris: one big challenge with the students was just talking to strangers. ⁓ What other challenges did they have with design thinking process, things that were a struggle for them to learn or figure out?
Tracy: Right. Okay, So what I was saying about ⁓ what else struggled with aside from empathy and talking to actual humans is they struggled being willing to pivot with their idea. So they came in with an already formed solution. I'm going to make a new bedpan. That's what a team wanted to do. They wanted to make a new ⁓ cleaner, self-cleaning, bedpan. based on interviews, often ask people to, it's time to pivot. know, ⁓ we test these ideas and these prototypes and they bomb, we have to go back to the drawing board and we have to pivot. And what I found is that that was the most difficult thing for these undergraduates to do was to go back and say, you know what, no one liked our idea. We're going to start over. It was like, nobody did that. No one. And I was just like, This could use some change, yeah.
Adam Morris: So really giving that nudge to say, the whole point of doing the design thinking is so that you iterate on what you're offering.
Tracy: Exactly, exactly. And that's what we wanted them to do is to iterate on what they were offering. And it was really hard to get them to do that. And sometimes the iteration was just, was small. But it was something. Yeah, exactly. We'll take it. Yes.
Adam Morris: ⁓ that's good. Yes, something. Right. I think. there is this kind of emotional attachment that we have to our ideas that, we think we know the right thing. And we are always looking for that validation. I notice it's just like being good in school. Like I went into the world thinking, ⁓ I have great ideas and I what I'm doing. And to be humble enough to say, hey, listen, no, my idea isn't necessarily what somebody else wants. I have to understand what they want and what they need and then find a better solution based off of what I'm learning. really challenging to let go ⁓ figure that out.
Tracy: It really is. It really is. And that's why, you know, we encourage prototyping and prototyping your life, prototyping your, your service or your, your product. and we did do those activities, but like I said, when you've got like, I've got this genius idea that people stick with it. I would say that's my challenge as an educator and something I'm going to work on in the coming year. is how do you prepare them to be good problem seekers and not just generators of ideas? So that's sort of my next role in teaching in the fall.
Adam Morris: sure. Well, it seems like a key aspect of that design thinking is after this empathy and testing the solution is integrating that learning back in with your pivot or your change and making sure that that's part of the loop. ⁓
Tracy: Absolutely, absolutely. It's always checking in with that target user and making sure that it's going back to them and not to ourselves.
Adam Morris: I'm curious, you've mentioned this a couple times of... prototyping your life of using design thinking on yourself. Like, does that mean? ⁓
Tracy: Right, yes. Yes, that's so cool. another thing that came out of the Stanford D School was this book Dave Evans and Bill Burnett called Designing Your Life. And it a big splash was in the New York Times Bestseller and they... They were on many podcasts. They were just recently on Mel Robbins talking about their newest book about finding meaning in But they use the principles of design thinking for yourself. So a really example of prototyping your life that they talk about ⁓ is was a story of a woman who decided that she was going to open a restaurant. So she opens a restaurant only to find out she hates running a restaurant. We talk about what could she have done before opening a restaurant? Maybe she could have catered a party or maybe she could have shadowed someone at a restaurant. Maybe she could have worked at a restaurant. What she found out is that she liked decorating the restaurant and so she learned that, but we don't have to go as far as starting a restaurant to find out what we love or want. We can do small prototyping activities to give us a sense of what that dream job would be like. So that's what we talked about for prototyping a life.
Adam Morris: Man, that seems really relevant for students and even early professionals, right? Who trying to figure out, what do I want to do with my life? Like school doesn't do that. It doesn't say, hey, I'm going to help you figure out what you actually want to do.
Tracy: Yeah, totally. Exactly. Well, that's what we try to do now. We have, I think, three people at Denison trained in designing your life that went to Stanford to study it. Stanford shares this material as they do pretty much everything. I think over 500 universities have studied designing your life at the D school. I hope it becomes even more popular, because at the D school, it's the most popular class there. And it is a lot of fun. It really is. I mean, with the subjects yourself, what's not fun?
Adam Morris: Yeah, well, it's a relevant question, right? People are at university to figure out their careers and what they want to do. And you have some time and some space dedicated just towards that process on yourself. And ⁓ you can't figure just by thinking in a closed box. You need some input. Same as with design thinking. You need to get outside and get some input to iterate on. ⁓
Tracy: Exactly. Right. Exactly. And designing your life isn't something that you hold up and do by yourself, but it's actually teamwork as well. You find what we call like a life design team. So you can brainstorm together. You can
solve problems together. Just like we do in design thinking, it's really, it's a team sport. And so is life design.
Adam Morris: love that. How do you bring a team together to design your life?
Tracy: So it's really cool. You have to share a lot of things with each other. You have to write, for example, your world view and your work view and answer questions like, why work? And then it's very empowering to read these out loud to people in room and have them help you and keep you on your path. So they help you learn things about yourself. Like maybe you like being in nature. You really care about sustainability. You're not just like writing on your own, like I could do this or I could do that, but instead they heard say cool things. Like maybe you said you like surfing. So they might say something like, what if you had a pirate theme surf camp in Costa Rica? And they might say crazy stuff like that. But at the same time, maybe it inspires you. Maybe could be an entrepreneur.
Adam Morris: Love it. So it's like brainstorming together just expands these ideas and builds on top of them.
Tracy: Exactly.
Adam Morris: Very cool. That sounds really fun. Now the work that you're doing at Denison is not all the work that you're doing. You have this project of reimagining the Rust Belt. Can you tell me a little bit about that and the need is and what you're hoping to change there?
Tracy: Yeah. it's been a long time now that I've been thinking about the Rust Belt. I'm from Middletown, Ohio, which is between Cincinnati and Dayton. And I would count as a Rust Belt city. we've, were once a booming steel mill town, but technology and globalization have really changed all of that. I've watched the town struggle with, revitalization and their economic woes, they seem to be ⁓ to the same solution every time. And wonder if after 40 years of trying the same solution, maybe we should try something else. And so thought maybe I could help, given that I've been so fortunate to be at these great schools and learn design thinking and practice it. So that's where I worked with the mayor and the city commissioner and to try to brainstorm new ways that we could revitalize the that don't just rely on one solution. That same solution being let's revitalize downtown. I don't know if that's the best answer. I just know we need to like do some big brainstorming on it to see what other possibilities exist for ⁓ a Rust Belt City.
Adam Morris: How does design thinking come into play in this scenario?
Tracy: Well, that, did a full on design thinking brainstorm, which is ⁓ a lot of post-its and a lot of saying yes and, not with solutions, ⁓ asking the questions. The right question is one that's open-ended. It doesn't have the solution built in it. So asking open-ended questions and working with these people from the city, that was a thinking brainstorm session. ⁓
Adam Morris: Sounds like the core principles of improv, like the yes and asking open-ended questions, showing up with curiosity.
Tracy: It is! It is! Totally, totally. In fact, when I was teaching at Stanford, they brought in an improv comedy coach to work with us to teach us, yeah, to teach us how to use more improvisation in our problem solving, ⁓ in our prototyping. And was scary for me and for all of us because they're like, now you do it, you be funny. And it was just like, ⁓
Adam Morris: Really? a lot of pressure, but interesting too that overlap of just looking at possibility differently. Like training in improv, like that is such a core element of being able to let go of an idea really quickly and understand and adapt to like what's coming out. And it seems like that level of empathy that you get from improv is the same flavor that shows up in design thinking.
Tracy: a lot of pressure. Yeah! You got it.
Adam Morris: think there's something neat there because ⁓ think lot of people don't realize the agency that they have to jump into their city or their town or their area and actually create change and do something. It takes level of, I don't know, some people have this spark and this guts of like, no, I'm just gonna show up and see what I can add.
Tracy: and it's really nice that there's community there of people who just want to make the place better.
Adam Morris: But I have a question about this agency of like, you seem to do this really well, like from being on the floor with your sticks, playing design thinking to like showing up Cornell and being like, hey, I'm going to try these programs. There's a certain level of agency that says, no, I'm just going to figure something out that I don't know. And it seems like for students who are learning entrepreneurship, that that is a key thing to learn as well, just like what is my agency for creating change in the world?
Tracy: Yeah.
Adam Morris: have you noticed on the, when it comes to students kind of learning about their own agency?
Tracy: I think that pretty fearless, to be honest with you. I don't think they know like their own limitations they're just like, I'm to start a political party or I'm going to start an empire of and cookies and I'm going to spread it to LA and Miami. they really like own their ideas and have this belief that I can actually, I can really do this in the world. So ⁓ if anything, it's like taking their agency and going, hey, listen guys, you know what? an amazing idea. Let's park that and work on some other ones. Let's brainstorm a whole bunch of other possibilities. But behind the scenes, they're pretty sure they've got a great idea. And know what? watched Ideas start with just like a mess and then turn into something great. You wonder how they do it. I don't know, but they've got a semester and they pull it off and it's just amazing.
Adam Morris: in that aspect, this kind of free energy to say, no, I can do this, is one part of equation. The other part of the equation is like, hey, is there a system which will take that where I'm flexible enough to adapt and change ⁓ and learn? And that's design thinking process that you're talking them through. So it sounds like those two together help ⁓ get students to much better
Tracy: And they only really kind of conflict in that we like to imagine all possibility, and then we've got kids who don't want to explore other possibilities. But we do it anyway. We have them practice it anyway. And they have fun with it. Yeah.
Adam Morris: That's the best way to learn. Just get thrown in the deep end it's been really fun having you on today a guest and talking about design thinking. This has always been core to my heart. GiveBackHack was born out of this idea of can we apply thinking to social issues in the format of Startup Weekend. Right? so it's always been about, can you get people in, have them come up with an idea, and then brainstorm up some ideas that they might solve this, go out and validate it, talk to people, have conversations, and then integrate that learning. hearing from you how this is ⁓ kind of applied in different areas is just really fruitful. understanding, yeah, here's how we can take design thinking and apply it to our entrepreneurship journey. also what I learned is like applying it to my life. Like, hey, actually, right, it's a style of curiosity that you can show up anywhere with. ⁓
Tracy: applying it to your life. Yes. It's so cool. Yes! Yes.
Adam Morris: With what's your vision for the future?
Tracy: You know what I'd really like to do ⁓ a focus at Denison on social innovation, social impact. We don't have like a specified, you know, course or group that does that. So I'd really like to take on a challenge for a nonprofit and lead in design thinking to come up with various solutions. I think of, I'm inspired by the ones at at Stanford where they helped prematurely born babies in Nepal get access to an incubator by creating a portable incubator. like, students did this? This is amazing. So I want my Embrace Incubator Challenge. That's what I want. I want it for our students. And I want to ⁓ solve something for the world. I know it's kind of a big goal, but.
Adam Morris: That's fantastic. So can find out more about the work that you're doing?
Tracy: Awesome. I have a website, tracydesign.rocks. I think that was the only domain left because innovation was taken. So now I'm rocks. And you can learn more about me and the organizations I've worked and even just the that I have. I bring design thinking to organizations I've helped, many nonprofits. ⁓ who are stuck ⁓ need of working through some challenges.
Adam Morris: Tracy, thank you so much for ⁓ with us your design thinking journey ⁓ ⁓ the tips and tricks on applying design thinking in your life. Thanks. ⁓
Tracy: Thank you, I really appreciate it.
Adam Morris: For guests who are listening, thanks for tuning into another episode of People Helping People. back next week to explore another topic, ⁓ helping you your social impact business ⁓ more effectively. next time, cheers.