Design Thinking for Aviation Safety Continued from page 21 convene a small committee to talk through the problem, make recom- mendations, and repeat the process. Using design thinking as a tem- plate for the way we approach the reporting program, the pro- cess might look more like: ■■ Form an understanding of what users (employees) need and want from a reporting program by focusing on stories and em- pathetic interviews of front-line users of the process. We might ask a mechanic to tell us about a day when they felt frustrated, and a day when things went really well. We would ask “why” often so that we can continue to explore the things that affect that person’s response to work. We might identify a time when management really “got it” and a time when they didn’t, from the mechanic’s perspective, and how that looks and feels. We would aggregate ideas from many stakeholders to better un- derstand their work experience. ■■ Shadow employees through their day by dressing like them, talking like them, working with them, eating with them, and engaging in conversation. ■ ■ Ask front-line employees to de- sign the process; then co-create that process after learning about their experience empathetically. Discuss the differences in the designs, and how the process of being the design recipient changed the resulting ideas. ■ ■ Create several possible solutions with a bias toward action, ask- ing ourselves ‘and then’ instead of examining why an idea Aviation Business Journal | 4th Quarter 2016 can’t or won’t work. We might identify some far-out solutions, like a button that records an audio hazard report and enters it into the system, or a machine that knows when informa- tion from previous reports is about to be useful, and reads the information just before it is needed. We would focus on ideas quickly, with emphasis on generation, not evaluation. ■■ Rapidly prototype ideas, even the wild ones, address the is- sues identified in the empathy phase for iterative improve- ment toward a user-centered solution. Because some of the ideas are a little far-fetched, we might narrow them into categories of the most rational, the most unexpected, and the most likely to excite the user. ■■ Place ideas back in the user’s control, allow them to test ideas, and solicit feedback. Example 2 Our fictional company is look- ing to add more structure to our internal event investigations. We’ve identified a line supervisor with an interest in safety, and sent her to a course that included topics in root cause analysis. We’re spending a lot of time reviewing incidents and accidents in the company safety committee, but event rates don’t seem to be dropping. Management is considering some additional investigation training in a classifica- tion system like the Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (HFACS), and the part-time safety manager is growing more frustrated. ■■ If we were to address the issue of investigations through design think- ing, the process may go more like: ■■ Work with front-line employees to determine the things that make them successful in their roles, and investigate what creates their roadblocks. Have employees “walk us through” a perfect shift, asking ques- tions about specific processes they use to accomplish work safely. Discuss how informa- tion from investigations is communicated to them. ■ ■ Work alongside the part-time safety manager during an or- dinary investigation to under- stand their perceptions of the role and expectations of how they interact with managers and line personnel. Ask what barri- ers prevent them from more ef- fectively learning how to achieve improved safety outcomes. Question why they think those barriers exist, and whether they serve alternative purposes. Brainstorm with a group about ideas to enable better investi- gations. We might arrive at an idea for conducting investiga- tions of things that go perfectly right, instead of only trying to learn from things going wrong. ■ ■ Prototype several ideas of what an audit of normal operations looks like. Perhaps we would focus on trying to extract ideas from employees doing the work we’re interested in investigat- ing to find better resources or processes to support them, and Continued on page 25 23
