When Human-centered Needs Conflict with Existing System, Which Way to Go?

Article ”Design Thinking for Social Innovation” introduces some examples in real-world to point out that Design Thinking should be human-centered and relevant to a particular cultural context in which the social innovation would generate impact. And later, the authors present three overlapping spaces that compose Design Thinking-inspiration, ideation and implementation. However, even some projects are considerable about human needs and complete the process of Design Thinking, they may still confront with some difficulties to further implement their ideas and expand their products. Under such condition, which way to go?

I’ll give a concrete example from China. Along with rapid increase of population and economic growth, traffic jam has become one of the biggest problems in China, especially in metropolitan city such as Beijing, Shanghai. People could be stuck on road for hours on the way to work and back home. And when there’s celebration event downtown on holidays, the traffic would be paralyzed. Since there’s no sign that the population would decrease in those central cities currently, a new approach of transportation is the emergent need for both citizens and local governments.

The idea of “Straddling Bus” was born from such bottom-up need. It is a wide-body elevated trolley, which could let cars passing through under its body and accommodate 1200-1400 passengers at the same time. The total passenger flow of straddling bus and the cars passing under it is comparable to the city subway. Meanwhile, the construction price is only ¼ of subway and the constructing speed is two times faster than subway. Besides, in order not to produce air pollution, it is motivated by electricity or solar energy.

Those ideas took 5 years to form, during the period, there are lots of brainstorms in discussions and finally the idea becomes more concrete and idealistic. However, when the model of Straddling Bus came to be tested, lots of problems emerged. Since it’s much longer, wider and higher than regular cars, the current transportation system is not compatible with it, including the width and length of the road, existing traffic rules, etc. Rebuilding this system would cost huge amount of money and human resources.

According to the article, Straddling Bus is now at the implementation stage, it is being tested and if there are problems coming up, participates can go back to ideation stage to restart discussion and find out solutions towards them. However, breakthrough innovations sometimes inevitably need to rebuild the current system. But what should be taken into consideration to decide whether or not further develop a brand new social innovation which may benefit people in a long-run but may cost a huge amount of resources in the near future?

[1] Design Thinking for Social Innovation (Brown, and Wyatt, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Winter 2010, pgs. 30-35)

www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/design_thinking_for_social_innovation/

[2] Introduction of Straddling Bus http://baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%AB%8B%E4%BD%93%E5%BF%AB%E5%B7%B4/2938351?fromtitle=%E5%B7%B4%E9%93%81&fromid=19258708&type=syn#viewPageContent