On Data, Design, Complexity and Innovation
Come for the thoughtful reflection on complex systems; stay for the star trek/wars references.
This week we hand the keys to the Crystal Ball to Leonard, our data and analytics lead, for his dispatch from intersection of qualitative and quantitative data exploration on an innovation team full of designers.
Leonard, over to you!
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This is a story about data and analytics, so I am going to refer to two things that are ostensibly nerdy.
When I was a kid, my hobby was to draw cities. Not pictures of imaginary cities, nor the skylines of real ones. But all the different pieces of infrastructure that could be layered on top of each other to get a city to work. Maps of the road system, the transit system, where electrical infrastructure would go, where the water and sewage treatment plants were to be placed, and an org chart elaborating on who would report to the mayor.
At first, my parents displayed these pictures proudly. But as my hobby got more esoteric, they struggled to post drawings of the floorplan of a proposed airport with the layout of the baggage claim and security clearance areas on the fridge for relatives to see. “Why don’t you keep that one in your desk?” they admonished. Cities have always been an interest of mine, but, deep down, what I really love is the interplay between complex systems. Cities – those hives of millions of people living their own individual lives and somehow coexisting – are the ultimate complex system.
I bring this up because there are many different gateways to data – and I was never really a math person, nor that computer savvy. Something else had to lure me down the rabbit hole, and that lure was that I’ve always reveled in systems.
Data is just dead numbers that stare at you from a spreadsheet (or, worse, are hidden objects until you query them) unless it’s harnessed to describe the workings of a system.
When people ask analysts to let the “data tell a story”, that’s what they mean: bite off a big-enough-that-I-can-generalize, but small-enough-that-we-stay-within-our-scope-sized chunk of the real world, treat it like its own little universe under a bell jar, and use a curated series of findings to describe what’s happening inside.
Recently, our Member Insights chapter has been tasked with doing exactly that with the Value Perception Index. Our universe is our 500,000 members and the small slice of their life where they interact with OMERS. This, too, is a complex system of individual people all with their own unique desires and wants and histories, living their own individual lives, and with very different ideas of the role they believe OMERS plays in their life, if any. We are bounding that little complex system and asking, with data, what previous interactions or aspects of their life could be associated with how they perceive of OMERS, and using those generalizations to inform the business in its decision-making around the future of pension delivery.
Our representation of reality won’t be perfect, of course. In fact, a lot of it will be far from perfect. But hopefully it will be useful. In many ways, we hope that the findings we present from the VPI survey results will be used flexibly and creatively by our designers and that we respond to things that might happen to the economy, society and people’s perceptions of value with a certain dexterity and resilience over the years.
That leads me to my second point, and my other promised nerdy analogy, and that is about the need for data people to be resilient. To illustrate this, I will contrast the world of Star Wars from the world of Star Trek.
In the Star Trek universe, everything is shiny, and everything works. Ships are aerodynamic and sleek. The ship’s bridge is a paean to minimalist design. Problems come up, and then they are resolved with minimal chaos. Even as a child, while I was drawing pictures of a city’s support systems, and when Star Trek TNG was a huge hit, I found this to be somewhat unconvincing.
In the Star Wars universe, everything is in chaos and a state of disrepair. R2D2 fixes the ship while Han Solo flies it into battle. Gangly bits hang from the underside of the Millennium Falcon which Luke unceremoniously declares to be a “piece of junk”. Weapons and tools and even major characters like C3PO and R2 are creatively built, sometimes on the spot, from whatever materials can be found. Not surprisingly, a surprising number of scenes and characters feature unsavoury junk dealers and smugglers of all kinds.
The data world – or at least the data world that I’ve experienced – is like the Star Wars universe. Perfect data does not exist, so you are always on the hunt for data points that can offer a reasonable approximation of what you want to represent. You often must pick up data from different sources and reconcile how the pieces can be integrated or fit together. Data itself is messy and needs to be cleaned. And the code! It will never win awards for its elegance, but after a few rounds of head-banging experimentation, it works and is subsequently pressed into service.
And you know what? I wouldn’t have it another way.
Just like I had tremendous fun literally jumping around the basement as a nine-year-old pretending to be Han Solo, I am having tremendous fun figuratively jumping around various data sources and trying to piece together various models to predict VPI or to build a model of our non-full time membership.
I wrote this piece with the intention of articulating the kind of work we do in data analytics and how we work, but instead I’ve reflected on what lured me into this world and what keeps me here. And it’s also worth reflecting that being comfortable with complex systems and being resourceful and inventive when you need to be are valuable skills on an Innovation team.
This approach to thinking and working with data – which is not the only approach, and may not even be common for the majority of people whose work touches data in different organizations – helps explain why I’m right at home on a design-oriented Innovation team.
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Onward.
What we’re reading (and listening to)
‘At first I thought, this is crazy’: the real-life plan to use novels to predict the next war - Three years ago, a small group of academics at a German university launched an unprecedented collaboration with the military – using novels to try to pinpoint the world’s next conflicts. Are they on to something?
The most popular design thinking strategy is BS – Some strong words about the ‘how might we’ statement that deserve consideration. In short, don’t assume a process designed to tell more soap can properly design society’s most pressing issues.
Intelligence Strategists Peered into the Future. This is what they Found. – An illuminating look at scenario planning in the real world, about the real world.
Trendspotting: The Binary and Nuance Conundrum - “Human beings have a strong dramatic instinct toward binary thinking, a basic urge to divide things into two distinct groups, with nothing but an empty gap in between. We love to dichotomize…Dividing the world into two distinct sides is simple and intuitive, and also dramatic because it implies conflict, and we do it without thinking, all the time.”
Why Do I Like Waiting for My Smartphone Photos to 'Develop'? - WIRED’s spiritual advice columnist on apps, impatience, and the struggle to control time itself.
Last word
“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.” — Sherlock Holmes