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January 27, 2023
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The 2023 election is the first election in which the youth are actively involved in ensuring that their votes are counted and the country develops into a place where they can thrive. The electoral body is also doing everything possible to ensure that anyone who bulges their pockets receives Nigeria in a hamper.
At Toast Creative Studios, we are creatives who have worked on solutions and built a solid reputation for over 10 years and we are writing about this firstly because our oldest team member isn’t even 30 yet and we all fall into the bracket of prime casualties of a broken Nigeria. Secondly, we’ve seen how important good design is in every choice we make, and how useful it is for creating long-lasting structures and solutions that satisfy our clients and their customers.
We believe that design thinking is essential and that is why it is important for our elected leaders to have it; Haven’t heard of design thinking before? Check out the image below
Empathy can be defined as the ability of one person to understand and share the feelings of another. Good designers (read as leaders) must conduct research seeking to gain a better understanding of the problems their users (read as followers) face. Like the Yoruba proverb say “Ẹni tó wọ bàtà ló mọ ibi tó ti nta òun lẹ́sẹ̀” which loosely translates to “Only the person who wears a shoe will know exactly where it pinches.” A leader in a high-level position must be able to empathise with citizens, especially when they are going through difficult times. Politicians can only solve problems if they understand firsthand how they affect people. Empathy is required for a politician to put himself in a position where he can experience these problems and understand how uncomfortable they are.
In the define stage, the goal is to establish a clear idea of the problem that is to be solved. It is easy to identify many issues in a country like Nigeria because let’s face it, you are probably experiencing one right now. Don’t believe me? Just look around you; Is there ‘light’ in your house?, or fuel in your gen? – it takes a good leader to identify the root cause of a problem.
Generate a variety of creative ideas. It may appear absurd, but sometimes the solution to a problem can be found in the tiny steps. A good leader knows to surround himself with people from diverse backgrounds who can see a problem and come up with a variety of creative workable solutions to prototype.
Create physical representations of a variety of ideas. If a community of ten villages is experiencing insecurity, prototyping is creating a specialized security unit and stationing them in one village. If insecurity is significantly reduced and peace is restored in that village, this is an effective prototype. The security force will then be expanded and deployed to the remaining nine villages. If the security unit fails in the first village, then another idea will be prototyped.
Allow users access to the prototype and obtain feedback from them. This is the process of developing structures for citizens to use and observing how they react before enacting legislation. The current naira shortage is a failed example of this. An effective way to test this would have been to look for the state with the most mobile banking transactions and implement a cashless policy there. The outcome may or may not open the door to testing in additional states. Instead of plunging a country into chaos and hardship.
A failed solution that has become law will eventually become another problem. This is why prototyping and testing are an intense loop that can only be broken by quality results.
Put the vision into action. The grand solutions you have created should be properly implemented, this will help users (people) enjoy them. Good designers (Leaders) know it is important to check every detail of the execution process. If a step is skipped, the effectiveness of the solution will suffer.
A president is the nation’s first designer. Voting for a president or governor is similar to hiring – you look at the resume and, on rare occasions, give tests to candidates to assess their skills and bandwidth. The best part about reviewing a candidate’s resume is seeing their track record, as well as their capacity. No hiring manager would choose a candidate with no high-quality work in their portfolio over one with efficient and detailed projects. So, whenever you go out to hire your candidate by voting, we hope that these will serve as a guide for you, to either reaffirm your decision on why your candidate is the best or why you should reconsider.
