W04 Design Thinking

    Having just celebrated Mother’s Day, the reading about the impact that one mother, Erzsebet Szekeres had on turning around assisted living for the disabled in Hungary, really made an impact on me (chapter 9: "What Sort of Mother Are You?", How to Change the World textbook). 
    Szekeres experienced isolation in raising her son, Tibor, who was severely mentally and physically disabled, young, and needed constant care. Her husband, family, and friends were ashamed of Tibor, served judgement, and offered little support. When she took her son to be examined, she was not given information or even allowed to view medical records or reports. The state’s solution for severely disabled was institution for life in systems that were inhumane and ignorant. The disabled in institutions experienced sexual, physical, and emotional abuse. 
    Benchmarks that Szekeres experienced started with when Tibor turned 6 years old. He had survived thus far and would likely survive into adulthood. She recognized that it was up to her to create a place for Tibor in society to live and work. She gave aide to parents like her, as well as disabled persons, to earn income. The Hungarian government was totalitarian and not easily lobbied, yet she got involved with the disability association. She compelled herself to educate herself and others. She worked to create an environment conducive to making mistakes and implementing solutions in order to have a working solution for everyone. Each of roadblock taught her something and refined her direction. 
    Ultimately, came extraordinary results. She created twenty-one centers across Hungary, providing: vocational training, work opportunities, and assisted living to 600 plus persons with various disabilities. Truly, she focused in on the issue and was innovative on creating change and then maintaining long-term working system. 
    This week as I focused in on creating solutions --which make up the cornerstone of social innovation, I became more familiar with “design thinking … used to create specific products, but it also has the power to create or redefine complicated systems. Design thinking demands that we not just think "outside the box" but rethink how we use the box" (BYUI instruction material W04 bus374).  
    Design thinking is an important skill in social innovation because sometimes you need to draw the box in order to know what to break out of (Design thinking… what is that? https://www.fastcompany.com/919258/design-thinking-what) Defining the right problem to solve is the most important of all the stages of design thinking. It requires a team or business to always question the problem to be solved and to participate in defining the opportunity and to revising the opportunity before embarking on its creation and execution. 
Einstein captured the challenge crisply when he said, “If I had 60 minutes to solve a problem and my life depended on it, I’d spend 55 minutes determining the right question to ask” (BYUI instruction material W04 bus374). 

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