Thanking Out Loud

Designing Thanksgiving

Lets imagine how thinking about stakeholders with empathy might change a Thanksgiving dinner.

I think it’s a pretty common practice for family and friends gathered for thanksgiving dinner to go around the table and each share something they are thankful for. As a Design Thinker, ask them to play a game instead. Go around the table, with each identifying a different person who contributed in some way to the joy of this shared meal (stakeholders), and see how many times you can go around table.

When you have exhausted the family and friends in the room, there are several dozen farmers, many people in logistics, manufacturing, engineers of all stripes, assembly line workers, entertainers, hospitality… eventually you will get to hungry to continue, and dive into the meal.

Later on, as you relax after dinner, you reflect with your friends on the exercise, and come to a common realization of just how specialized and interconnected our society is. So much so that a single meal was the result of the work of quite literally thousands of people from all over the world.

To complete the loop, find actions to take. Give form to ideas that are driven by a desire to return joy to the stakeholders.

And so the impact of Design Thinking on Thanksgiving dinner extends well beyond the people at the table that day. Who would have thought that a design discipline could have such a significant impact on dinner?