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BUSINESS ENGLISH · BUSINESS ENGLISH IN VIDEO · UPPER-INTERMEDIATE (B2-C1)

SHORTCUTS

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1 Warm-up

Do you take shortcuts when going somewhere?

2 Key words

What do you think the underlined words and phrases mean? In pairs, match them with the correct
definitions below.

1. The council wanted to pave an area of the forest but the residents protested against it.
2. The south side of the park is littered with trash from the concert.
3. Jan had to dash to the station because he was late to meet his girlfriend.
4. Stephan is very resourceful. He was able to find really cheap flights to South America.
5. Ben had to confront a scary dog. It was blocking his path.
6. The weather is currently in a state of flux. You never know if it’ll be rainy or sunny.

a. a situation that is changing constantly

b. come face to face with a difficult situation
c. cover the ground with a hard surface such as concrete or bricks
d. good at solving problems
e. is scattered with a lot of a particular thing
f. to move in a hurry, to quickly go somewhere

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3 Before you watch

You are going to watch a designer talk about how we can create better products and services for
customers. Decide if each of the statements below is true or false, and then watch the video to
confirm or correct your answers.

1. People always use the path around the edge of Highbury Fields in London.
2. The design of Brazil’s capital, Brasilia, is a grid pattern.
3. Designers at the University of California built shortcut paths as part of the original design.
4. Ayr Muir changed the location and menu of his food truck every day.
5. The U.S. NIH (National Institute of Health) put grass back over a path patients had made.

4 What do you remember?

Choose the correct answer for each question below, then check by reading the transcript of the talk.

Video 1. What is around the edge of Highbury Fields in London?

a. Victorian houses
b. a forest
c. Georgian houses

2. What term does the speaker use to talk about a path that people take if they want to get
somewhere quickly?

a. a dash path b. a desire path c. an intelligent path

3. In which part of the airplane design are all the important buildings in Brasilia?

a. the engine b. the tail c. the cockpit

4. How many more pedestrian accidents occur in Brasilia compared with the average American city?

a. three times more b. five times more c. ten times more

5. Why does the speaker think that university students often create new pathways on the ground?

a. They want to find the fastest route to get to lectures because they are often late.
b. They think that the quickest route is always the best route.
c. Creating shortcuts is a hobby for some students.

6. Why did patients at U.S. NIH not want to use the cars the hospitals provided after treatment?

a. They felt sick.

b. The drivers drove badly.
c. They had to pay to use the cars.

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5 Phrasal verbs

Look at the transcript of the talk. Complete the definitions below with the infinitive forms of the
underlined phrases in the transcript.

1. : place something on a surface

2. : go across and not around to get somewhere faster
3. : discover a solution or solve a problem
4. : think of an idea

Now complete the sentences below with the phrasal verbs in their correct form.

1. You could the parking lot last year. But now they blocked the second exit.
2. The city was below them. The view was great from the top of the mountain.
3. Gabriella had a solution. They would sleep in a caravan and not in a tent.
4. Most people have already the quickest way to get to the airport.

6 Collocations

Match the adjectives and nouns to form collocations from the talk.

1. a meandering a. age

2. low b. approach

3. a smart c. friction

4. a real d. need

5. the golden e. path

Now make up your own sentences using the collocations.

7 Talking point

Now, watch the conclusion of the talk and discuss any of the questions below.

1. What point do you think the speaker is trying to make?

2. Can you think of any product or service that needs redesigning?
3. Did you notice any of your customers or clients taking unexpected shortcuts?

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Transcripts

4. Before you watch

0.00 When we’re designing new products, services or businesses, the only time you’ll know if
they’re any good, if the designs are good, is to see how they’re used in the real world, in
context.

0.25 I’m reminded of that every time I walk past Highbury Fields in north London. It’s absolutely
beautiful. There’s a big open green space. There’s Georgian buildings around the side. But
then there’s this mud trap that cuts across the middle. People clearly don’t want to walk all
the way around the edge. Instead, they want to take the shortcut, and that shortcut is self-
reinforcing.

0:49 Now, this shortcut is called a desire path, and it’s often the path of least resistance. I find them
fascinating, because they’re often the point where design and user experience diverge.

1:03 Now at this point, I should apologize, because you guys are going to start seeing these
everywhere. But today, I’m going to pick three I find interesting and share what actually it
reminds me about launching new products and services. The first is in the capital city of Brazil
– Brasilia. And it reminds me that sometimes, you have to just focus on designing for a real
need at low friction. Now, Brasilia is fascinating. It was designed by Niemeyer in the ’50s.
It was the golden age of flying, so he laid it out like a plane, as you can see there. Slightly
worryingly, he put most of the important government buildings in the cockpit. But if you
zoom in, in the very center of Brasilia, just where the point is there, you see it’s littered with
desire paths. They’re absolutely everywhere.

1:52 Now, they thought that they had future-proofed this design. They thought in the future we
wouldn’t need to walk anywhere – we’d be able to drive – so there was little need for walkways
or pavements. But as you can see, there’s a real need. These are very dangerous desire paths.
If we just pick one, in the middle, you can see it crosses 15 lanes of traffic. It won’t surprise
you guys that Brasilia has five times the pedestrian accident rate of your average U.S. city.
People are resourceful. They’ll always find the low-friction route to save money, save time.

2:29 Not all these desired paths are dangerous, I was reminded flying here when I was in Heathrow.
Many of us get frustrated when we’re confronted with the obligatory walk through duty-free.
It was amazing to me how many people refused to take the long, meandering path to the left,
and just cut through to the right, cut through the desire path.

2:51 The question that’s interesting is: What do designers think when they see our behavior here?
Do they think we’re stupid? Do they think we’re lazy? Or do they accept that this is the only
truth? This is their product. We’re effectively co-designing their product. So our job is to
design for real needs at low friction, because if you don’t, the customer will, anyway.

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3:18 The second desire path I wanted to share is at the University of California. And it reminds me
that sometimes the best way to come up with a great design is just to launch it. Now, university
campuses are fantastic for spotting desire paths. I think it’s because students are always late
and they’re pretty smart. So they’re dashing to lectures. They’ll always find the shortcut. And
the designers here knew that. So they built the buildings and then they waited a few months
for the paths to form. They then paved them. (Laughter) Incredibly smart approach. In fact,
often, just launching the straw man of a service can teach you what people really want.

3:59 For example, Ayr Muir in Boston knew he wanted to open a restaurant. But where should it be?
What should the menu be? He launched a service, in this case a food truck, and he changed
the location each day. He’d write a different menu on the side in a whiteboard marker to figure
out what people wanted. He now has a chain of restaurants. So it can be incredibly efficient
to launch something to spot the desire paths.

4:27 The third and final desire path I wanted to share with you is the U.S. NIH. It reminds me that the
world’s in flux, and we have to respond to those changes. So as you’ll guess, this is a hospital.
I’ve marked for you on the left the Oncology Department. The patients would usually stay in
the hotels down on the bottom right. This was a patient-centered organization, so they laid
on cars for their patients. But what they realized when they started offering chemotherapy
is the patients rarely wanted to get in cars. They were too nauseous, so they’d walk back to
their hotels. This desire path that you see diagonally, formed. The patients even called it "The
Chemo Trail". Now, when the hospital saw this originally, they tried to lay turf back over it,
ignore it. But after a while, they realized it was an important need they were meeting for their
patients, so they paved it.

5:24 And I think our job is often to pave these emerging desire paths. If we look back at the one
in North London again, that desire path hasn’t always been there. The reason it sprung up is
people were traveling to the mighty Arsenal Football Club stadium on game days, from the
Underground station you see on the bottom right. So you see the desire path. If we just wind
the clock back a few years, when the stadium was being constructed, there is no desire path.

5:52 So our job is to watch for these desire paths emerging, and, where appropriate, pave them, as
someone did here. Someone installed a barrier, people started walking across and round the
bottom as you see, and they paved it.

6:11 But I think this is a wonderful reminder as well, that, actually, the world is in flux. It’s constantly
changing, because if you look at the top of this image, there’s another desire path forming.

6:22 So these three desire paths remind me we need to design for real human needs. I think
empathy for what your customers want is probably the biggest leading indicator of business
success. Design for real needs and design them in low friction, because if you don’t offer them
in low friction, someone else will, often the customer.

6:45 Secondly, often the best way to learn what people really want is to launch your service. The
answer is rarely inside the building. Get out there and see what people really want.

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6:57 And finally, in part because of technology, the world is incredibly flux at the moment. It’s
changing constantly. These desire paths are going to spring up faster than ever. Our job is to
pick the appropriate ones and pave over them.

7:13 Thank you very much.

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Key

1. Warm-up

Encourage discussions in small groups.

2. Key words

Students work individually and check in pairs.

1. c 2. e 3. f 4. d 5. b 6. a

3. Before you watch

Watch the talk until 5.24.

1. F - They walk across the center.
2. F - It’s an airplane.
3. F - They waited for students to make paths and then paved over them.
4. T
5. T

4. What do you remember?

Play the video again if necessary. Pause in the appropriate moments so students can write down their answers.
1. c 2. b 3. c 4. b 5. a 6. a

5. Phrasal verbs

Hand out a copy of the transcript to students.

1. lay (something) 2. cut through 3. figure 4. come up with
out (something) out (something)

1. cut through 2. laid out 3. come up with

4. figured out

6. Collocations

1. e 2. c 3. b 4. d 5. a

7. Talking point

Play the talk from 5:24.

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