Case Study: Method Selection
In 2007, Doug Dietz, an industrial designer at GE Healthcare, watched a young girl being wheeled toward an MRI machine he had helped design. She was crying, terrified. He learned that so many children were panicked by the experience that up to 80% had to be sedated just to get a scan. Dietz had spent his career making the machine technically excellent - but the experience was broken. His choice of method determined everything that followed.
An engineering (TRIZ-style) response would try to make the machine quieter or faster. Dietz realised the real problem was a human interacting with a designed system - a Design Thinking problem. He enrolled in a Design Thinking workshop and started with empathy for terrified children.
Trace the method choices
Click each step to reveal what happened.
Where in your world is a broken experience being treated as an engineering problem (or vice versa)? What would change if you switched methods like Dietz did?
Sources
- Kelley, T. & Kelley, D., Creative Confidence, 2013 (Doug Dietz / GE Adventure Series).
- GE Healthcare, "Adventure Series" pediatric MRI case documentation.
- Global Innovation Institute (GInI), Foundations of Innovation - matching methods to problems.