WEBVTT

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When we're designing new products

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services or businesses,

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the only time you'll know
if they're any good,

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if the designs are good,

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is to see how they're used
in the real world, in context.

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I'm reminded of that every time
I walk past Highbury Fields

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in North London.

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It's absolutely beautiful.

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There's a big open green space.

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There's Georgian buildings
around the side.

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But then there's this mud trap
that cuts across the middle.

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People clearly don't want to walk
all the way around the edge.

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Instead, they want to take the shortcut,

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and that shortcut is self-reinforcing.

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Now, this shortcut
is called a desire path,

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and it's often the path
of least resistance.

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I find them fascinating,

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because they're often the point
where design and user experience diverge.

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Now at this point, I should apologize,

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because you guys are going to start
seeing these everywhere.

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But today, I'm going to pick
three I find interesting,

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and share what actually it reminds me

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about launching new products and services.

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The first is in the capital city
of Brazil -- Brasilia.

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And it reminds me that sometimes,

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you have to just focus
on designing for a real need

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at low friction.

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Now, Brasilia is fascinating.

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It was designed by Niemeyer in the '50s.

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It was the golden age of flying,

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so he laid it out like a plane,
as you can see there.

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Slightly worryingly,

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he put most of the important
government buildings in the cockpit.

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But if you zoom in,
in the very center of Brasilia,

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just where the point is there,

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you see it's littered with desire paths.

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They're absolutely everywhere.

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Now, they thought that they
had future-proofed this design.

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They thought in the future
we wouldn't need to walk anywhere --

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we'd be able to drive --

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so there was little need
for walkways or pavements.

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But as you can see, there's a real need.

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These are very dangerous desire paths.

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If we just pick one, in the middle,

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you can see it crosses
15 lanes of traffic.

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It won't surprise you guys

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that Brasilia has five times
the pedestrian accident rate

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of your average US city.

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People are resourceful.

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They'll always find the low-friction route

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to save money, save time.

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Not all these desire paths are dangerous,

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I was reminded flying here
when I was in Heathrow.

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Many of us get frustrated
where we're confronted

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with the obligatory walk
through duty-free.

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It was amazing to me

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how many people refused to take
the long, meandering path to the left,

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and just cut through to the right,

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cut through the desire path.

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The question that's interesting is:

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What do designers think
when they see our behavior here?

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Do they think we're stupid?

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Do they think we're lazy?

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Or do they accept
that this is the only truth?

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This is their product.

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We're effectively
co-designing their product.

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So our job is to design
for real needs at low friction,

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because if you don't,
the customer will, anyway.

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The second desire path I wanted to share

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is at the University of California.

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And it reminds me

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that sometimes the best way
to come up with a great design

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is just to launch it.

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Now, university campuses are fantastic
for spotting desire paths.

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I think it's because students
are always late and they're pretty smart.

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So they're dashing to lectures.

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They'll always find the shortcut.

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And the designers here knew that.

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So they built the buildings

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and then they waited a few months
for the paths to form.

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They then paved them.

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(Laughter)

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Incredibly smart approach.

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In fact, often, just launching
the straw man of a service

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can teach you what people really want.

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For example, Ayr Muir in Boston
knew he wanted to open a restaurant.

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But where should it be?

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What should the menu be?

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He launched a service,

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in this case a food truck,

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and he changed the location each day.

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He'd write a different menu
on the side in a whiteboard marker

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to figure out what people wanted.

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He now has a chain of restaurants.

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So it can be incredibly efficient

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to launch something
to spot the desire paths.

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The third and final desire path
I wanted to share with you

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is the UNIH.

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It reminds me that the world's in flux,

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and we have to respond to those changes.

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So as you'll guess, this is a hospital.

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I've marked for you on the left
the Oncology Department.

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The patients would usually stay
in the hotels down on the bottom right.

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This was a patient-centered organization,

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so they laid on cars for their patients.

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But what they realized when they started
offering chemotherapy

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is the patients rarely
wanted to get in cars.

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They were too nauseous,
so they'd walk back to their hotels.

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This desire path that you see
diagonally, formed.

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The patients even called it
"The Chemo Trail."

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Now, when the hospital
saw this originally,

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they tried to lay turf
back over it, ignore it.

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But after a while, they realized
it was an important need

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they were meeting for their patients,

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so they paved it.

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And I think our job is often
to pave these emerging desire paths.

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If we look back at the one
in North London again,

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that desire path hasn't always been there.

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The reason it sprung up

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is people were traveling to the mighty
Arsenal Football Club stadium

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on game days,

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from the Underground station
you see on the bottom right.

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So you see the desire path.

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If we just wind the clock
back a few years,

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when the stadium was being constructed,

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there is no desire path.

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So our job is to watch
for these desire paths emerging,

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and, where appropriate, pave them,

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as someone did here.

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Someone installed a barrier,

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people started walking across
and round the bottom as you see,

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and they paved it.

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(Laughter)

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But I think this is a wonderful
reminder as well,

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that, actually, the world is in flux.

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It's constantly changing,

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because if you look
at the top of this image,

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there's another desire path forming.

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So these three desire paths remind me

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we need to design for real human needs.

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I think empathy for what
your customers want

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is probably the biggest leading indicator
of business success.

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Design for real needs

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and design them in low friction,

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because if you don't offer them
in low friction,

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someone else will, often the customer.

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Secondly, often the best way
to learn what people really want

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is to launch your service.

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The answer is rarely inside the building.

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Get out there and see
what people really want.

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And finally, in part
because of technology,

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the world is incredibly flux
at the moment.

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It's changing constantly.

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These desire paths are going
to spring up faster than ever.

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Our job is to pick the appropriate ones

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and pave over them.

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Thank you very much.

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(Applause)