Leonardo Da Vinci, Human Centered Design, and Me

I worked at SC Johnson for almost seven years, during which time "the Da Vinci Method" was in its heyday. It took me until now—nine years after leaving SCJ and more than a decade since they abandoned the philosophy—to realize what that name truly meant, and it was genius! But before I can tell you that story, I need to tell you this one first.

From grad school to SC Johnson

From 2007 to 2009 I went to the Institute of Design (ID) at Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT or Illinois Tech, the currently preferred name). The trade I learned there was called Human Centered Design or Design Thinking. And I’ve been living off of what that program taught me ever since. Our dean at the time was Patrick Whitney. Patrick was smart. Besides teaching and administration, he started partnering up with corporations that he thinks could and should adopt Human Centered Design as a philosophy in their marketing and new product development process. One of the companies that Patrick most successfully sold the philosophy to was SC Johnson (A Family Company!). With top down advocacy from Mr. Dave May, head of R&D, and support from the chairman’s office, SC Johnson adopted the philosophy, hard. We are talking, redesigned spaces for collaboration, project rooms, training programs for the masses, special team of full-time “navigators” to teach and propagate the methods, ground-up projects in all four major categories that run this process. The name of the process, The Da Vinci process. The faith in “Da Vinci” was tremendous.

The butterfly effect of Patrick's strategy

Here is the genius of Patrick Whitney. This whole transformation at SC Johnson quite simply started to create a limited but sizeable job-market at SC Johnson for ID students. Over the course of a few years, dozens of students were hired as full time designers embedded in each of the four SCJ businesses, with even more coming through as summer interns every year. On top of that, as SCJ started to spin up “Da Vinci” projects, design consultancies started to get very juicy projects from SCJ that goes from up-front original ethnographic research, all the way to design, prototyping and engineering for new product offerings. Some projects lasted multiple years. This, in turn, stimulated hiring of the design firms all over the country, further boosting demands specifically for ID students. I myself was one of the many beneficiaries of Patrick’s grand strategy. I saw this clearly at the time, and I can appreciate this vision even more now. People can have different opinions about the success of Patrick’s tenure as dean, but I am grateful for what Patrick did for the school and for us.

During those years at SCJ, there were Da Vinci training, Da Vinci projects, Da Vinci teams, Da Vinci navigators, Da Vinci meetings, Da Vinci Steering Committees, you name it. There were whole buildings dedicated to Da Vinci, with bright colors, white boards, Post-Its, and Sharpies. Towards the end, there were even “Da Vinci - light” projects named “Michelangelo” projects. I, myself, was on a couple of those.

Why "Da Vinci" was good to me

I was grateful for “Da Vinci” for three reasons. First of all, it played a big role in landing me a job when I most needed it. I was graduating, along with other lucky classmates of mine, at the height of the great recession of 08/09. Without Patrick, without Da Vinci, without SCJ, I can imagine a very different career trajectory for an international student needing work VISA support from any potential employer. For those who are not familiar, there is a grace period from a few months to a year to find a job after graduating from an “F1 student VISA”, during which a foreign student need to find an employer willing to sponsor a “H1b work VISA”. Otherwise you need to leave the country or you will be overstaying the welcome of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), part of Homeland Security, and you DON’T want to do that. But I had major doubts at the time when I got the offer from SCJ, going into a corporate environment and a commute that was 75 miles away, out of state. But that was the only offer I got, and the immigrant in me felt super validated and grateful that a company would be willing to hire me in THAT economic climate, despite needing to go through the troubles of dealing with immigration. So of course I took it and I have no regrets looking back (Thank YOU Salvador!).

Secondly, it gave me a stage to do what I love. Da Vinci methods took exactly what I went to school for, and let me use 100% of what I learned in a real world, business setting, with the whole company firmly believing in it (at least at the time). Da Vinci was really a full version of ID methods, crystalized into a teachable, repeatable, essential package. ID was made up of many professors teaching compatible, but overlapping and slightly different versions of tools in pieces. And of course there were more tools than you would ever really need for a real life project. It was really up to the individuals to choose wisely and use them in their own way. In a business setting, that level of complexity and ambiguity from the academic world just won’t work. So Da Vinci was streamlined, simplified, distilled down from a two year, master’s degree to a week-long training, so that people who are completely new to it can be trained quickly go apply it in project work developing new products. And in that environment, I get to do what I love, and be the expert walking into almost any project rooms, even though I was in my early twenties and fresh out of grad school.

Last but not least, it got me fantastic exposure and experience that set me up for many years of my career since. However young I was, I know more about this whole Da Vinci thing than most of my colleagues because they learned about it from training last week, while I just got a master's degree on it. This gave me way more authority and confidence than my age and experience deserved. And this authority made me the de facto leader when it comes to everything design or process related. And in a “Da Vinci” project, my leadership would broadly include things like how we should conduct ethnographic research, what are the research questions, how many participants, what counts an insight, how best to word and visualize the insights for the presentations, what the heck do we do next, etc. etc. I was the main decision maker for hiring and managing design firms on annual budgets into seven figures. Esteemed design firms that I, as a gradating student, was lucky to even get an interview with not a few months ago, now eagerly reached out to me to compete for project work. The table had turned. It felt weird, undeserved, but good, you know, as a twenty something person would. But more importantly, it was great for my development as a young design professional. The talents I got to work with, the network I was able to build and friendship forged, the global research trips I went on, the end to end processes I led, products and services launched, collectively laid the foundation to launch my career. And later on when I reflected on my journey, those experiences really shaped who I became as a person. Without Da Vinci, none of that was possible, at least not so early or quickly.

And then...

What happened during that period and especially the beginning of the end of Da Vinci at SCJ should probably be the thesis of a documentary film. I’d love to watch that. Long story short, executives went through revolving doors, and Da Vinci, along with the whole philosophy of Human Centered Design, was out of fashion at SCJ after a few short years. And I left the company a couple of years after that. Although I have been applying the same set of skills and process for a living since then, the name “Da Vinci process”, did not come up, unless I was reminiscing with another ex-SCJer. And the kind of reminiscing (although sounded very much like a great idea now, so much so in fact, I’m going to arrange some chats after I am done writing this) scarcely happened over the years. And the name “Da Vinci” faded back in my memory merely as the name of the renaissance artist who painted the Mona Lisa.

Bumping into Leonardo

Fast forward to last year, I was in Italy for a hike when I discovered a Leonardo Da Vinci exhibit in Venice. The exhibit featured scaled models based on Da Vinci's sketchbooks and engineering work, housed in the converted Church of San Barnaba—the same building used as the exterior shot of the library where "X marked the spot" in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. I was equally excited about both the film connection and learning about Da Vinci.

The Leonardo Da Vinci Exhibit in Venice

One of the wooden prototypes at the exhibit

Though the exhibit was somewhat touristy and worn, it sparked my interest enough to finally read Walter Isaacson's biography of Leonardo da Vinci, which had long been on my reading list. That was followed by another book about the unsolved Monster of Florence cases by Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi, where the main suspects coincidentally shared the last name Vinci (or WAS it a coincidence?). Throughout Isaacson's book, and particularly in its introduction, he brilliantly distilled the key insights about Leonardo Da Vinci:

… the ability to make connections across disciplines, arts and sciences, humanities and technology, is the key to innovation…

Da Vinci also inspired Steve Jobs to say the following:

He saw beauty in both art and engineering, and he's ability to combine them is what makes him a genius.

Leonardo and Human Centered Design

It was at this point that it finally dawned on me, how perfect the name “Da Vinci” was to the whole human centered design philosophy and process. There are many parallels between the human centered design principles and Leonardo Da Vinci, the person, in spirit. Here are the main ones, in no particular order:

• Observation and Curiosity: Da Vinci was known for his keen observation of nature and human behavior, similar to how Human Centered Design emphasizes user observation and empathy. Watching, studying and dissecting cadavers is in spirit the same exercise as observing users or immersing ourselves in their daily life to inform ideation and design.

• Iterative Process: Da Vinci's notebooks show multiple iterations of his designs and ideas, reflecting Human Centered Design's emphasis on prototyping and iteration. This was very clear from the models the exhibit I was at too, there are clear signs of iterative improvement.

• Cross-disciplinary Approach: He seamlessly merged art, science, and engineering - much like how Human Centered Design encourages looking at problems from multiple angles

• Human-centered Focus: Both Da Vinci's work and Human Centered Design place human needs and experiences at the center of problem-solving

• Visual Thinking: Da Vinci used sketches and diagrams extensively to explore ideas, similar to Human Centered Design's emphasis on visualization and prototyping

• Collaborative Work Style: Leonardo da Vinci had a strong inclination for independent work, but he also sought collaboration when it aligned with his goals. Unlike the quirky genius stereotypes throughout history, he was both social and collaborative, with close relationships with numerous artists, intellectuals, and patrons. Collaboration is also what Human Centered Design promotes as effective work style.

After living and breathing the Human Centered Design philosophy professionally for nearly two decades, it has grown beyond just defining my professional identity—it now shapes how I approach life's challenges and forms a core part of who I am. Reading Walter Isaacson's book and rediscovering Leonardo Da Vinci helped me appreciate the brilliance of naming SCJ's human-centered design approach "the Da Vinci process." Drawing these parallels also helped me distill what human centered design means in my mind. But this is what I am most excited about: I think Leonardo Da Vinci is my newest obsession and personal hero!

What’s your story with Human Centered Design? Who’s your personal hero?

Walter Isaacson's book on Leonardo Da Vinci

The Monster of Florence book