What happens when one of the world’s biggest companies takes a shot at care? What are their strengths, and what plays into their advantage? Can they apply the same principles they applied for other businesses, and most importantly, can they tailor the fabric of care itself? Here are some of my thoughts on how Amazon has the power to create a real impact and become the most admired healthcare brand in the world. What it can do and what it needs to do to address a $3.6 trillion question?
Healthcare, as we know it.
As some of us know, healthcare broadly is an elaborate graph of various stakeholders connected and interacting through too complicated, inter-woven cycles of emotions and experiences (yes, emotions, and experiences). From self-diagnosis to getting acute care, the consumer interacts with multiple touch-points of products and services. This endless spectrum requires physical infrastructure, logistics, supply chain mechanics, and, most importantly, to be right most of the time.
Healthcare, as we experience today, is a reaction to a particular condition or an episode. …
yform.studio is a strategy + design firm using design to bring clarity to complex problems, frame new opportunities and build meaningful and impactful products.
After having spent close to 18 years working along with design agencies, consulting and product companies, I decided to take the entrepreneur route and start on my own. This decision was many years in making and in hindsight something I should have taken a long time ago. This is the story and ethos behind how yform.studio came into being. I loved reflecting on this journey and hope you enjoy reading it.
The Wonder Years
I grew up in a small town, Shimla, neatly tucked in foothills of Himalayas, in northern India. …
The challenge of being homelessness and our responsibility towards a problem that should not exist.
“ On a single night in 2018, roughly 553,000 people were experiencing homelessness in the United States. About two-thirds (65%) were staying in sheltered locations — emergency shelters or transitional housing programs — and about one-third (35%) were in unsheltered locations such as on the street, in abandoned buildings, or in other places not suitable for human habitation.”
** From 2018 Annual Homeless Assessment Report (AHAR)
The very notion of not having a roof over your head is a unthinkable scenario for all of us, yet we have about half a million (recorded in 2018) individuals facing that challenge every night in America. Since 2007 the rate of homeless individuals has been dropping, until 2016 and for last two years it has been growing slowly. To make matters worse 20% (111,592) of these homeless individuals are children and 40% are now women.
As a designer, advising startups in complex domains such as healthcare, wellbeing and social-good, has brought me face to face with many challenging questions. Questions on design thinking, user research, product design, building organizations etc., but none have intrigued me more than about how to build a brand for startup?
Firstly let us try and understand if there is a difference between a product and a brand. If there are any boundaries and overlaps and how each of this helps an organization to solve problems and grow their business.
Understanding Brands
In 2006, late Robyn Putter, then the leader of the Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide Creative Council, coined that “The brands we most admire are built not just on big ideas, but on big ideaLs”. The emphasis here was on how the organizations perceive themselves through their values, mission and vision or alternatively how they think they want to be perceived by the rest of the world. The fundamental thought was to rally all the stakeholders to create a belief system to move an idea, or ideal for Robyn, to fruition.
Let’s take few examples.
The Smarter Planet
IBM’s Smarter Planet initiative is rooted…
A case for design interventions in 1.5 trillion dollar student loan debt crisis in America. The plethora of problems and how design can shift this conversation?
“ Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit. Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.”
- Article 26: Right to Education, United Nations 1948
Over 70 years ago, On December 10, 1948 the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal…
What is architecture of well-being and how to use design thinking for a better now and better tomorrow.
In February of 2019, I was fortunate enough to present my thoughts on designing for well-being at the Paris Design Summit. The summit was a gathering of individuals and organizations looking at newer models of how to address the issues around sustainability and built environment. This narrative (as a continuity of my thoughts at the conference) is about the need of well-being, its definition and how design thinking can help us create a better tomorrow.
The challenges today
Globally, there has been a general decline in quality of life, health and happiness at individual and community level. Some nations are thriving and others are struggling to address basic needs of human living. The disparity has caused many think tanks to invest time and resources to understand and address the issues that plague the quality of life. Broadly, these issues can be seen from a lens of — Health (physical well-being), Happiness (feelings, engagement, growth etc.) and Harmony (community, environment).
Healthcare as a measure of well-being is being challenged globally from a perspective of quality, access and cost. It…
yform.studio
yform.studio is a strategy + design firm using design to bring clarity to complex problems, frame new opportunities and build meaningful and impactful products.
