What does sushi have to do with design? 🤓
Over the past year, I've been pondering how to make the methods used in our work more intuitive and implementable, such as Design Thinking, or more narrowly, defining the problem by framing the right "problem statement." I like the "How might we" method here, for example, "How might we make Neapolitan pizza taste like it does in Naples?" It's a good way to engage the team in concrete thinking about the problem the product is supposed to solve and coming up with focused, creative ideas. But how do we make sure that the good old "How might we" works in practice as well as it does in theory? 🧙🏻
And here comes the "sushi method" that I just came up with for the sake (not this 🍶!) of this post – maybe I'll patent it someday. 🍣
Traditionally, according to the Japanese school, the art of sushi involves eating each piece at a time. No ready-made nigiri, futomaki, or hosomaki is cut into pieces. But in our beautiful country by the Vistula river, we like it when there's plenty on the plate (and preferably cheap 😅). And in the US, everything has to be big because there's a lot of space to utilize (just look at cars in the States! 🚛).
So what happens to sushi then? Sushi becomes really big. I've seen sushi bars where eating one hosomaki could result in a dislocated jaw. Or we cut it, but that's already a desecration of sushi.
And I noticed that when working on defining the problem to solve, I myself practised making sushi rolls too big. Hence, the problem with swallowing them. For me and the team. In practice, this means trying to answer everything in one problem statement. Putting in so much that it becomes too big to tackle.
What's the moral of this?
👉🏼 Practicing the creation of problem statements in the Japanese style helps. 🎎 This means breaking down the problem into small bites that are easy to eat, instead of a big piece that a normal person won't fit in their mouth, and if they do, they'll probably choke. 🤪
👉🏼 Creating as many statements as needed* (few, many, depends on the project) and prioritizing the burning ones.
👉🏼 And then step by step, towards the goal.
* And there's still room here for solutions that can address more than one statement. 👈🏼
I dare say that the "sushi method" will work in every aspect of product management — what is creating tasks and putting them into the backlog, after all? Too big, they may be unworkable in one sprint, so we don't feel satisfaction, we don't see progress in our work as developers and designers, and it's hard to get started on them.
So, eat and design safely! After all, nobody wants to dislocate their jaw, right? But we all want to eat deliciously and healthily, and feel satisfied and pleasantly drowsy after the meal. Perfect for drinking a small espresso.☕️
(Illu made with Adobe Firefly ✨)
