Today a friend was helping me to understand the mind of Stephen Dedalus — that loathsome self-styled artist of Ulysses fame. It’s important that I understand his mind because I need to play him in a rehearsed reading, and he’s a character which at first reading is terribly loathsome.

What my friend explained to me is that as a creative, artistic mind Stephen lives almost entirely in his own world. He has little empathy because truly he has no interest in other people’s lives. Rather he has his own experience — which to him is universal — and his classical education, from which he thinks he can create a kind of art. His education in particular is important to him, and the allegory my friend drew (not in the book) was that if Stephen Dedalus was walking on the beach and saw two women fishing, he would immediately be reminded of some classical literary work and would begin to quote it, and debate it and analyse it, and let himself be lost in a reverie of artistic exploration.

In what felt like a reflex, I realised why I was not like Stephen. I immediately pictured two woman in old Irish country dresses, heads in a scarves, and wearing aprons, with a large net hanging between them. With this picture I couldn’t help but think:

1. Are they wearing proper footwear?

2. Is the net most efficient way to catch fish on a beach?

3. Does the net tangle easily? How would an untanglible net look?

4. Is there a tool to save their backs from hoisting up the fish?

I could have considered the conversation they were having, and what their backstory was, but instead I looked at the work, and wondered if that was the best way it could be done.

People are always talking about the value of design thinking, and I think this is one of the things they mean by it. It’s not only about informed methodical thinking, it’s also about looking at a situation as a system of components, and assessing their interactions.

There are many times throughout the day that I’m thinking about plot points, and listening for interesting dialogue; but what really seems to get my gears grinding away is thinking through a process. Anything from election management, to food preparation and ergonomic headphone design, it’s getting lost in these thoughts of “how did they do this?” or “how could we do it better?” that occupies most of my idle moments.

Perhaps you’re the same. When you see someone preparing a salad and choosing lime juice over vinegar, you may ask yourself “what do they have in common?” or “what are the benefits of each?”. If you do, then I think it’s fair to say that you are practising design thinking. The next step is to understand why we add acids to our foods, and the cultural significance of vinegars around the world, and … well there we go.