Bake a Cake

I recently had the pleasure of blogging for Toronto’s MaRS Discovery District   I enjoyed sharing my experiences using design thinking to solve problems faster.

One of my biggest learnings from the design-thinking process has been exploring how to develop and refine a problem statements or “solve the right problem.”

Designers use what they learn about their users to continuously refine the problem they are solving. In other words, they reframe their challenge from a user’s perspective.

One of my favourite case studies of “solving the right problem” is over 60 years old—before “innovation” was part of our vernacular! As outlined in this article, in the 1950s General Mills launched a line of cake mixes under the famous Betty Crocker brand. The company’s initial problem statement was likely something like: to create a fast and easy way to bake cakes, using a mix.

When the just-add-water instant cake mix didn’t sell well, General Mills did not retreat. Instead, they re-doubled their efforts to understand their end user who, at the time, was “the busy homemaker.”

Research revealed that: “the average American housewives felt bad using the product despite its convenience. It saved so much time and effort when compared with the traditional cake baking routine that they felt they were deceiving their husbands and guests… Women felt guilty getting more credit than they deserved. So they stopped using the product.”

General Mills aptly realized that the problem they needed to solve was something more along the lines of: “Vanessa, the busy homemaker, needs a quick and easy solution to bake for her family because she enjoys creating baked goods for the people important to her, but she doesn’t have the time or energy to bake from scratch.”

General Mills’ ultimate solution was to develop cake mixes that required adding an egg and water (thereby addressing the need to “create”). The formula survives as the much-loved Betty Crocker cake mix that many of us enjoy today.

Key takeaway: Ensure that you craft a fact-based, specific and actionable problem statement to solve. Frame your problem from your users’ perspective and consider leveraging the format: [USER] needs to [USER’S NEED] because [SURPRISING INSIGHT].