Design thinking has well and truly become the buzzword in the Indian Startup ecosystem today. With the rise of this phrase, we have seen an unprecedented rise in the status of formerly undervalued ‘designers’. Do designers possess some superpowered thought process that allows them to ingest any problem and come up with elegant and practical solutions?
Design thinking, in essence, is a systematic way of tackling problems and creating innovative sustainable solutions.
Empathize → Define → Ideate → Prototype → Test.
Seems simple, right? 5 steps to solve any problem. An incredibly attractive and easy-to-employ process.
“The emphasis on “thinking” makes the point that design is more than a pretty face: it has substance and structure. Design methods can be applied to any problem: organizational structure, factory floors, supply-chain management, business models, and customer interaction.” – Don Norman
Design Thinking is a useful myth
If design thinking is so efficient, why is it then that 90% of Indian startups fail within 5 years of inception? Did they try to solve irrelevant problems? Did they not figure out a growth strategy? Do entrepreneurs not find the right designers? Do entrepreneurs really have to employ Design Thinking themselves?
Designers who are not designers
Before the stone-pelting begins, let me clarify. If design thinking is just a way of solving problems, then isn’t everyone a designer? Doesn’t everyone solve problems on a daily basis? The scale of these problems might differ wildly but shouldn’t we all be solving problems in the most elegant manner possible?
The term Design thinking is essentially a wrapper around the traditional creative thinking process. Musicians, artists, writers have all historically employed creative thinking to innovate and create amazing works.
The singular identifiable difference between creative thinking and design thinking – while it was seemingly rare for creators (in the outdated and traditional sense) to create iconic work, design thinking democratizes the whole process; instead of an exception, design thinking demands that it be the norm.
Jared Spool in his Medium post argued that the backend performance engineers at Netflix are designers too. The main objective of these engineers is to ensure that their servers work effectively and data gets delivered in a timely manner to a consumer.
“And yet, at the very moment that a Netflix viewer’s video stream stops and that spinning animation appears, indicating the player is now awaiting more data, these engineers make a dramatic change. They become user experience designers.” – Jared Spool
The Power of Experience Mapping
If backend engineers are also designers, where does this stop? Are people from marketing, sales, technology also designers then? Turns out that yes, they are all designers. As a rule of thumb, design thinking insists that anyone whose work adds to the consumer/customer experience is essentially a designer whether you like it or not.
ये सब तो ठीक है पर भाई कहना क्या चाहते हो?
मुद्दे की बात ये है की अगर सब डिज़ाइनर है तो बेचारे डिज़ाइनर क्या करे? Turns out the problem doesn’t fully lie with “designers who aren’t designers”. ‘Designers’ are also to blame here.
Consider the following statement – “Designers make things look good”. Does this make you angry? If yes, you’re having the correct emotional reaction and you can stop reading now.
If not, is the job of a designer to make a product feel good or look good? Even if a product looks and feels good, does it really add to the business goals of the organisation? Does the role of a designer end at the deployment of their ideas?
My friend, Dharmesh, argues that most ‘designers’ nowadays do not even consider implementation and measuring impact of their ideas as a part of their work. The above visual is from his presentation titled “A Designer’s Ambition – What does the peak of your Design career look like”.
An idea is only as good as its performance in the real world, right? So why does it seem that most designers don’t consider implementation and impact a part of their job?
Turns out there is a reason why most designers skim over the implementation and impact of their work. According to a McKinsey report (The Business Value of Design) when hiring a designer, just over 50 percent executives of 300 publicly-listed companies globally admitted that they have no objective way to assess or set targets for the output of their design teams. How much of this is true for the Indian ecosystem?
Could it be? Could it really be that the design industry in India too is operating on the vague notions of what looks/feels good? Can designers evolve to incorporate implementation and impact in their JD?
The same report also outlines how companies that put human-centric design at the centre of their companies, grew revenues by 32 percentage points faster and Total Returns to Shareholders by 56 percentage points as opposed to companies that failed to do so.
Summing up
If you’re looking for some sort of resolution to everything I said above, then I humbly apologise. I don’t have answers.
What I want to leave with is more questions. Questions such as –
- Can entrepreneurs come up with metrics that accurately depict the contribution of design to their organisational goals?
- How quickly can ‘Designers’ adapt and incorporate implementation and impact into their roles?
- Even if we move on both of the above fronts, will that result in Indian products with true human-centric design?
- Is Design Thinking the secret ingredient that will help India’s startup ecosystem create big wins like the Googles, Facebooks and WeChats of the world?
There are lots and lots more questions that need to be raised and answered before we dismiss or accept Design Thinking as a key factor in the success of an organisation. If you want to raise more questions or volunteer with us to help answer some, please write to me on [email protected]