An excellent story about being careful to solve the right problem

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Design thinking is a set of cognitive, strategic, and practical procedures that designers use. I have been skimming a 2025 book by Fred Estes titled Design Thinking: a guide to innovation. There is an excellent story on pages 86 and 87 that you can read at Google Books:

 

“Case Study: The Town Pool

 

In one Scandinavian town, the community swimming pool had always been a hub of activity, and everyone enjoyed it. But in a brief span of time, attendance dropped sharply. The concerned town council jumped to the conclusion that the pool complex had become outdated and believed a new pool was the answer. They selected an architect and invited him to present design concepts for their multimillion-dollar vision.

 

Yet when the architect arrived at the council meeting, he didn’t bring intricate scale models of a proposed pool complex. Instead, he held up a single sheet of paper. The architect explained that he closely inspected the pool and then talked with the people in town, especially frequent swimmers. After these conversations, he realized an outdated pool wasn’t leading to poor attendance. The sheet he held up? The town’s bus schedule.

 

One of the town’s bus routes ran right by the pool, and most people rode the bus to the pool. But the town’s transportation department had recently changed the bus schedule so that the buses only ran along the route to the pool in midmornings and midafternoon. They dropped the early morning and later afternoon runs – the times when most of the daily swimmers went to the pool before or after work. The architect’s insight was simple – revert to the old bus timetable.

 

Taking his advice, the town saw pool attendance rebound to the previous levels and saved time and millions of tax dollars. This architect had done more than solve a problem. He made sure the town solved the real problem. The town learned the value of placing their ladder against the right wall.”

 

If the pool got outdated, then attendance should have gradually tapered off, and not dropped suddenly.  

 

The swimmer cartoon was adapted from an image at OpenClipArt.