5 Things Monsieur Poirot and Miss Marple Can Teach Designers
If designers were the detectives of the business world, what could we learn from some of the best detectives in literature?
During the summer, I decided to take a break from reading professional literature. I guess many people switch to beach reads on vacation, but I had a good reason not to. I was about to start at a new job and, for the first time in my life, my job title would say “service designer”. I had somehow managed to talk myself into this position despite my experience in the field being limited to two service design courses taken during my studies. So prior to my first day as a service designer, I should have probably been combatting my impostor syndrome by feverishly scrambling through all the books on the topic. Instead, I decided to properly unwind before starting this new chapter in my life, and turned to my go-to author for this purpose: Agatha Christie. I was excited to be join the talented Miss Marple and Monsieur Poirot in trying to solve the trickiest of murder mysteries. I thought I had picked an author and a genre as far away from design as possible, but to my surprise I was wrong.
While spending my evenings with Agatha Christie’s books, I realized that I was constantly reflecting on my own design practice along the way. When Monsieur Poirot was interrogating the suspects and focusing not only on what they say but how they say it, I thought about the way in which designers should involve customers and stakeholders in the design process. When Miss Marple candidly took out the binoculars in the tea room to look at birds, in reality inspecting a scene occurring outside the window, I wondered whether designers should also occasionally be less explicit about using design methods and practices. I was curious to expand on the analogy, so I decided to write about it. If designers were the detectives of the business world, what could Monsieur Poirot and Miss Marple teach us?
1. Embracing the detective mindset at all times
As anyone who has read Agatha Christie’s books knows, Jane Marple and Hercule Poirot often accidentally find themselves in the midst of the action. Miss Marple solves many crimes in her hometown St. Mary Mead, but almost as often she is pulled into a murder mystery while staying at a hotel or an old friend’s place. She’s a sharp-eyed old lady who just happens to be looking at birds with her binoculars when peculiar things occur. Hercule Poirot’s expertise is also often needed rather unexpectedly. For example, in the Murder on the Orient Express, he books a seat on a train from Istanbul to London and on the first night a passenger is murdered. Although the murders are unforeseeable, both characters are known for paying close attention to the people around them as well as any peculiar events. So when a crime does occur, the detectives already have a plethora of observations to dissect.
What designers can learn from this
Monsieur Poirot and Miss Marple can teach us budding designers about the importance of embracing the design mindset at all times. Regardless of whether you’re interviewing a customer success manager or having lunch with a salesperson working in the DACH market, it’s important to keep the design spectacles on. Valuable customer insights or thought-provoking new ideas could arise in any situation. What’s more, when starting out at a new organization, designers rarely know where the true design problems lie. We may be given a specific first project but it’s often framed as a solution to be improved rather than a problem to be solved. By keeping our ears and eyes open we can make small yet important observations every day. The detectives of our literary world can also teach us about how we approach those daily encounters.
2. Not always appearing as a detective
Christie’s books highlight that sometimes it can be valuable not to be seen as a detective. This is especially the case with Miss Marple. Most characters view her as a harmless and fragile old lady grossly underestimating her wit. Consequently, she can pop by for a tea at someone’s place or get into deep conversations without anyone realizing that she is in fact listening very carefully and picking up interesting bits of evidence. Moreover, Miss Marple’s ability to listen attentively, defer judgement and ask the right questions draw people to her. For example, in They Do It with Mirrors Jane Marple sits on a bench in the garden while almost all of the other characters pop by her one by one. Just like that, her conversation partners share compelling stories about their backgrounds.
What designers can learn from this
When solving a murder mistery it’s easy to understand why not appearing as a detective can be a clever approach. But why would a designer want to appear as just the old lady in the room and not a seasoned professional solving a tough design problem? As Miss Marple knows, it’s important to make friends with the people in your town before trying to solve any murders. If your colleagues find it easy to talk to you, they are more likely to do it. Furthermore, people rarely understand what designers actually do for a living. In fact, most designers don’t know what the other types of designers do! So to make design more approachable, it can be smart to drop the fancy terms and learn to speak the language already used inside the organization. For example, instead of saying that you’re going to conduct interviews as part of design research you could say that you want to understand how your company onboards new customers and therefore plan to talk to customer success managers. But when we’re in those conversations, how should we approach them?
3. Hearing everyone’s story, but also seeing beyond it
The key to solving a murder mystery is hearing everyone’s take on the events prior to the murder while keeping in mind that each account may be influenced by confounding variables. Miss Marple and Monsieur Poirot are familiar with the quirks of the human mind: If the focus is directed to one thing — often done on purpose by the murderer — , people can become completely blind to another event occurring right under their eyes. For example, in A Murder Is Announced, the murder is literally announced in the local newspaper. Regardless of this, the people present at the murder scene remain entirely oblivious to what actually happened and share multiple different accounts of what they saw or heard. Moreover, as it turns out, people aren’t always telling the truth in murder mysteries. Talking to each suspect one by one allows the detectives not only to hear everyone’s story, but also to observe how they tell it. For example, Monsieur Poirot often deliberately asks certain questions to see if they evoke an unexpected or strong emotional reaction. By doing this, he’s shedding light on the truth beyond the words.
What designers can learn from this
Although design can sometimes feel tough, we are fortunately not solving murder mysteries and do not need to question whether the “suspects” are telling the truth. However, talking to customers and stakeholders is a key element of the design process and we can learn some best practices from Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple. Instead of focusing on what people say, designers can pay special attention to how they say it and, even more importantly, on what they actually do. Furthermore, designers should keep in mind that solutions rarely arrive at the designer’s desk directly from the mouth of the customers or stakeholders. We need to listen to the people we are designing for and with, but ultimately we are responsible for creating something that is a lot better than what the customers, users and stakeholders are able to articulate. Like in Agatha Christie’s novels, if we inquire the suspect’s personal guess for the murderer, it’s a mere curiosity which can help us better understand the suspect. We know that in the middle of the design process no one knows what the solution should look like. Yet regardless of how fluent a designer is in understanding the design problem, she eventually needs to take some time to work towards a solution.
4. Using those little grey cells
Although Miss Marple and Monsieur Poirot have quite different personalities, their approach to solving murder mysteries is very similar. After talking to each suspect, they investigate whether the stories actually hold up. For example, they may list all the events in chronological order or reflect their hypotheses against the floor plan of the murder scene. Both detectives also tend to run small experiments. In The Murder on the Orient Express, Poirot asks each suspect to write down their home address after the interrogation which allows him to check each suspect’s dominant writing hand. On some occasions, the detectives play out the events at the murder scene to test how the murder could have taken place. Finally, Miss Marple and Monsieur Poirot rarely work alone: They regularly get help from a police officer or a friend. Of course, in Miss Marple’s case the reverse is true: she is the one helping the official detective assigned to solve the crime. Nevertheless, in the end, it’s all about using those little grey cells and patiently working towards a solution with the help of the best available evidence.
As an important side note, Jane Marple and Hercule Poirot’s patient and systematic way of working is often in stark contrast to the people around them. The police officers or detectives officially assigned to solve the crime or the people helping Hercule Poirot tend to become frustrated because the murder seems impossible to solve. They may hastily suggest the most likely suspect to be the murderer. However, Marple and Poirot always remain level headed in the face of solutions that the most prominent leads point to. They also know that it’s unwise — and sometimes even dangerous — to share their suspicions before they have collected sufficient evidence.
What designers can learn from this
Designers can learn a lot from the process of solving murder mysteries in Christie’s books. Designers can systematically document all the insights and pieces of evidence collected when talking to customers and stakeholders or doing some other type of background research. We can run small experiments and test our ideas through prototypes. Moreover, we can reserve time for thinking and reflecting. The true value of design can only shine through if we allow ourselves the time to pause. Lastly, we can learn to trust the process even when the people around us are quick to offer solutions. Designers have often learnt an approach that resembles that of a detective: we focus on the problem, not the solution. This way of working may be completely foreign to an organization that is new to design. However, when we are dealing with a tricky design problem, we need to believe that with the right tools and methods, the pieces of the puzzle eventually come together.
5. Bringing everyone together to share the solution
If you’ve ever read murder mysteries, you know that it’s almost impossible to correctly guess the murderer before reaching the very last pages of the book. At the end of Christie’s books, the suspects are often brought together for the big reveal. By asking the suspects questions and offering potential narratives that solve the mystery, the detectives guide the audience toward the right solution. Once the murderer is identified and the events meticulously laid out, it all seems to make sense brilliantly. Afterwards it’s easy to flip through the pages and see the evidence that was staring the reader right in the eye.
What designers can learn from this
Every design process has its challenges and when working with tricky or even wicked problems, coming up with a solid solution is really difficult. But once a good solution is found, it’s important to talk it through with everyone involved. Even if the solution could provide great value to customers or users, it’s useless if it doesn’t fit into the organization’s way of working and is thus not adopted. However, as Poirot and Marple know, the right solution always makes sense. If it’s unnecessarily complex, perhaps the job is not quite finished.
Thoughts on finding (literary) mentors
While writing this text, a past wish circled back to me. Before starting my new job in August, I had wished for a mentor. I longed for someone to exchange ideas with when I was struggling to find the right design approach. Someone to support me in learning what it actually means to be a designer from 9 to 5. I thought this someone would be a senior designer with years, if not decades, of experience in the field. Therefore, it took me a while to realize that two mentors were looking right at me on the pages of Agatha Christie’s novels. It felt comforting to reflect on my design practice with two very distinctive personalities: Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. I learnt that mentors may be fellow professionals, but they may just as well be admirable fictional characters. So regardless of who you get as a mentor, be sure to pay close attention when they speak.
