Design Conversations: Denis O’Brien
Posted on May 4, 2011 | posted by:
This semester Clive Dilnot has taught a class called Thinking Contemporary Design, an open format class that adjusts each week to reflect changing topics and discussions. We have followed several themes through the semester with each week focused on a particular topic. We have had a host of wonderful speakers to help give dimension and depth to complex design issues. These guests have varied backgrounds all intersecting important aspects of current design challenges. One of our guests was Denis O’Brien: inventor, consensus decision-making expert, university instructor and all-around one of the most pleasant people you could have a chat with.
O’Brien introduced us to the challenging world of structured change. This topic is a great way of looking at working in non-design environments. As designers we are often asking groups to shift to our mode of creating and developing ideas – a mode that does not come naturally to all. As a consultant you may end up as the only designer on a team of engineers, HR reps, or sales people. Not only are you as the designer out of your element but the rest of the team are those that need to champion and co-develop and ultimately own the change you enable.
Although our class time was only two hours, O’Brien lead us through a broad range of valuable tools and insights that are highly relevant. Our time with Denis O’Brien was a mixture of lecture, workshop like activities, and conversation. O’Brien, an enthusiastic and skilled teacher, took us through an overview his background in ergonomics and experiences designing control rooms and facilitating change. He shared with us process elements and tricks to gain acceptance, momentum, and success in changed based projects.
He interwove design, change, and teaching illustrating a number of times the complementary skills and tools these each have. Some of the themes that emerged was the need for collaboration, experimentation, reflection and transparency when dealing with change issues. As a facilitator, designers must coordinate collaborative environments, provide the opportunity for the process to filter to the surface, designing ‘chance’ encounters and spaces for collaboration. A key to facilitating change is to be patient – staying in the community to work within its culture rather than imposing an ‘alien’ culture.
Collaboration was prominent in our discussion with several themes including transparency, experimentation, honesty and reflection. O’Brien illustrated the skills of a collaborator and change maker are often those of a great instructor and facilitator. While all of our visitors to the Design Conversations class have been engaging, with interesting varied backgrounds, Denis O’Brien’s visit was uniquely memorable in both content and delivery.
Denis O’Brien teaches at the Open University. You can learn more here: http://www.open.ac.uk/
