Thinking of Design Strategy
Design Strategy is a process that combines the traditional methods involved in business operations with the creative innovation that helps generate a business-growing experience. It amalgamates out-of-the-box thinking with contemporary techniques of strategy and planning to establish something new and improved. I believe it is more than just a method of finding gaps and appropriating solutions, it is looking at the bigger picture to look beyond existing problems and solutions and using them as opportunities to differentiate from competitors.
Reading Reflections: Design Thinking translates into thinking like a designer. According to the HBR reading ‘Design Thinking’ by Tim Brown, there are few notable qualities of a design thinker such as optimism, collaboration, integrative thinking, experimentalism and empathy. A good design thinker leverages these qualities to think bigger than incremental tweaks and instead move in new directions. This is visible in the example of India’s Aravind Eye Care System. The qualities of design thinking are displayed when the company tried to circumvent the problem that was how to best deliver eye care to populations far removed from the urban centres where Aravind’s hospitals are located. The company formed their own manufacturing unit when they realised they could not reduce suppliers’ pricing to change the market completely. They created an inexpensive solution to a large social and medical problem. This was the importance of the systems view in design thinking.
Critical Thinking: I believe the role that design strategy plays in the design process is an iterative cycle. It involves identification of a problem, finding a competitive advantage, setting goals that can be measured, and listing down techniques, equipment and personnel required to meet these goals. This process also involves continues improvements to existing plans and changes in response to external stimulation. For example, with the ongoing recession, it is becoming harder for firms to invest in experiments as they have to be cautious about overheads. In such times, it is beneficial to change a designer’s outlook from using prototyping and testing and instead look at existing resources that can be leveraged. A product whose deign that I admire is the dating application ‘Tinder’. The designers of the Tinder interface focussed on creating something that is not just easy for humans, but that comes naturally to them. The ‘swipe right to like’ and ‘swipe left to dislike’ feature flows inherently to humans while scrolling, so this feature required minimal user education. The designers behind this idea were thinking of making things more intuitive for users and wanted to transform the online dating space with a differentiating feature, moving from point A to B with a single swipe. This process involved identification of a consistent vision which was the comfort of the end user and using resources to not only improve the application but change it to create an improved version altogether.
Personal Reflection: The class exercise to ‘design a perfect toothbrush’ led to some interesting discussions. I noticed how everyone has different requirements and expectations from something as simple as a toothbrush. The exercise performed in class to interview your partner and understand their problems and creatively design a solution further enhanced the learning process. In this process, I understood my partner’s primary concern was with germs on the surface of the toothbrush and bristles. We then discussed radical ways to solve this problem. In addition to the standard bristle cover or toothbrush container, we also proposed a mouth-friendly disinfectant spray that would be used on the toothbrush before using to get rid of any germs that were collected and also a UV-ray sanitising box that could be used to store the toothbrush that removed germs with no contact. Overall, the exercise taught me how to be empathetic with a partner’s needs, identify the problem and then look at multiple ways to solve the problem till you find the most ideal.