Part 2, Design Thinking, moving from “Survival” to “reflective” circular approach
Part 1, questions the current popular process of Design thinking as popularised by IDEO now followed all around the world. Designer on one level is expected to develop skills on bringing an idea to a physical experience often making it easy, pleasant and useful for the stakeholders of the experience. He typically sketches ideas, works out scenarios, gives inputs on the human capabilities, designs the physical form or the interactions of the idea with prototypes, tests it with few sample users and refines to achieve a certain level of maturity of the experience and hand holds the builders. In a way he is key in shaping an idea (expectation of a desired imagination) considering constraints of current realities (like today's building capabilities, financing, social acceptance and so on).
Design today is deeply married to technology which is in turn married to Business entity. The outputs are influenced by the progress in Tech and political interest and potential capacity of the idea to generate profits that which in turn enables the creations of corporations. When I designed Vliv starting with an idea to explore the potential of the camera on a phone to record your life seamlessly, I was also creating an entity of experts around me who will create a profitable breakthrough in parallel. As we created the product, we also created a Private Entity, employing people - one set having a faith in our idea another who wanted to simply participate in exchange of service. In fact, during the end, the entity with people had created more value than the idea or the product!. As a designer I totally missed the ‘other ‘— The creation of these fantastic team of highly skilled individuals.
If we explore the meaning of “Design thinking” a little more (than a methodology of design-specific cognitive activities that designers apply during the process of designing that can be taught to “Non Designers”), I can create some space to discuss some important aspects of Eastern values, that may influence the way we want to think about design overall.
Imagine one fine morning in a designer's studio. Mind you, designer is skilled in giving shape to your idea by amazing visualization and has a great grip of current constraints. Today, he has two clients. One wants help on designing a simple garden to grow her food for the month. Another client is a combination of an artist and a geeky scientist. Artist wants to sell genetically modified Pink colored Rabbits who will help you to feel happy all the time as soon as you touch them. They will be mass produced and shipped to every corner of the world. What would you do as a designer?
In the first example, there is hardly any capital. The second, by the sounding of the idea may require Billions of dollars in investment. If you do not participate, both the clients will go ahead with another designer. In the garden example, the client's expectation is small, she would probably be happy with the sight of tomatoes in garden after 30 days. In the second example, client would continuously want to upgrade his “Pink Rabbit” with his competition and may never be happy. He may reap profits, but constantly be under pressure to outperform himself to satisfy the forces of market. As designer I may get a chance to engage with the client for a longer duration of time and reaping more money by participating and giving shape to hundreds of his experiments. These hi-tech involvements anyways make my portfolio look sexy. I can show that I sophisticatedly managed giving value during experiments, marketing of the product and conducting full scale user studies giving insights on the impact of the “Pink Rabbit” on the lives of 4 year olds (target segment) and conveniently leaving the impact on ecological side effects of the production of Pink Rabbits on Society. It is ok to focus on the happiness of the 4 year old, than the rabbit or the production side effects.
The future contexts of design for me seem to be just like the story of the Pink Rabbit case. Even if I fight along side the animal right activists who are worried about what the rabbit feels or with the environmentalist who are worried about the level of biodiversity that gets displaced due to the production of Pink Rabbits, client may pay me only on the insights I share on the 4 year olds happiness. So the morning in ‘designers studio’ looks interesting and he has to pick a project for himself, what would he do? Like Lucy, he understands what he is getting into and runs a “Predictive algorithm” that estimates the overall impact (social, ecological, genetic etc) vs his earning (algo crawling his expectations, ambitions, curiosity, capacity and needs). He decides to take the first project as the overall impact is showing positive to all stakeholders including the earth and he asks for more time and another round of talks with the second client wishing to ship his Pink Rabbit. As it certainly is more complicated.
With client two, he proposes a design thinking workshop. He starts with empathising on whom? The rabbit or the 4 year old or the factory workers? Obviously the clients are interested only on the 4 year old. What does he define? Living toy that brings happiness to your child or transforming the rabbit to another specie? What will he prototype? Adding extra features to pink rabbit, like making him jump, roll and dance to enhance engagement? and get immediate feedback? All this sounds too strange and indifferent as we are missing some key components of design thinking or components that “are missed” in creation of form. What is missed? How can we fill this gap?
In a very gross attempt, let me try to sketch a process that was developed over centuries of evolution in the Indian Subcontinent. It is based on Individual reflection than the desperate deadliness of Scientific progress.
Rikta/Stithi — Absorb Ecosystem not by external mapping but by internalizing and unifying.
This may sound preachy, but we have no choice to see ourselves as participants of a biological ecosystem. Due to our evolution of intelligence, we move forward collectively by taking collective responsibility of how we affect our ecosystems as a whole. My first part of design thinking workshop will possibly have pictures of Rabbit, lab, Rabbits ecosystem, 4 year old's life, lives of workers of the production site, the pictures of the distribution system and so forth. All will be mapped, discussed and understood to a level of what impact this project will hold. The estimates including all the parameters that can be documented. This process is called Absorption. Similarly, with my first client, we choose various plants, soils, organic manures good to set up the garden. Not only that, we establish a relationship with the nursery and see if the garden can be in continuous connection with it. Digging deeper, we may want to explore conserving plants that help in adding to a bio diversity that enhances the neighborhood. (Unlike calculating how much food we can grow per garden).
Rasa — Articulating the character/essence of the context
A rasa (Sanskrit: रस) literally means “juice, essence or taste”.It also connotes an ancient concept in Indian arts about the aesthetic flavor of any visual, literary or musical work, that evokes an emotion or feeling in the reader or audience, but that cannot be described. Rasa in the Upanishads refers to the “essence, self-luminous consciousness, quintessence”. Rasa is produced from a combination of Determinants (vibhava), Consequents (anubhava) and Transitory States (vyabhicaribhava).
Imagine the workshop, spending time to explore the “Essence” your idea. It simply asks, what is the essence of your idea? How can we churn it? (it cannot be sketched or sculpted). In case of Pink rabbit, the essence is to make (Transitory) a 4 year old, a rabbit, factory worker happy (Consequents) by making some profits (Determinants). When this gets discovered, will it influence the first process of creation? Will we look at alternatives?
Roopa — Development of form by the projection of the essence
The meaning of Roopa is “Blessed with beauty” in regard to appearance and function. It means both materiality and sensibility — signifying, for example, a tactile object both insofar as that object is made of matter and that the object can be tactically sensed. In fact rūpa is more essentially defined by its amenability to being sensed than its being matter: just like everything else it is defined in terms of its function; what it does, not what it is.
What shape is formed? What are its attributes? Will it be a Pink Rabbit with cyborg features? Or will it be “Rabbit Caring sessions” with Kids organised by local animal lovers community with probably pink safe color to play with ? The form develops over an internal questioning process covering various material parameters listed above, among the stakeholders.
Kaala — Sense of time
“After a cycle of universal dissolution, the Supreme Being decides to recreate the cosmos so that we souls can experience worlds of shape and solidity. Very subtle atoms begin to combine, eventually generating a cosmic wind that blows heavier and heavier atoms together. Souls depending on their karma earned in previous world systems, spontaneously draw to themselves atoms that coalesce into an appropriate body.” — The Prashasta Pada.
The infinite vision of time and space is key in Indian Tradition. Indian tradition upholds the idea that creation is timeless, having no beginning in time or end. Each creation and dissolution follows in sequence. The whole cosmos exists in two states — the unmanifested or undifferentiated state and the manifested or differentiated state. This concept gives a tremendous possibility for Roopa to takes its own course in the process of manifestation. It will not hinder its shaping by cutting the event into parts.
My workshop may not be limited to 2 days with my clients. After that, every association with him, may not be purely only on a business dimension but may be in many other dimensions will add to the manifestation of the form. I build my relationship with the client over a period of time, similarly the project will build its relationship with us or the participants will build their relationships in parallel and in cyclic order of events.
After few days i hope to meet the geeky scientist, playing in a park of pink rabbits taken care by local animal lovers. He has become popular for his unique intervention in society and also among kids. He has not used his bio-engineering tricks to solve his problem and artist is busy filming how kids play painting on rabbits. To facilitate this, they both charge a fee. They have also saved their billion$ of investment and also money engine required to run and justify the investment. Over a period of time, they have deeper relationships with each other.
Manas — State of (creator's) mind
In Indian tradition, Manas acts as receptacle for the senses where memories are stored and used by intelligence. It is a state required to make decisions and make sense of the world. It's usually fickle, vulnerable to external conditions, constraints and also inner feelings. To stabilize this and get liberated from this state, we simply witness (watch) our inner feelings and our reactions to the external world. At every stage of ideation, we watch our own state. This automatically results in peaceful space to take decisions of prime importance.
Series of emotions drive us. Ideas can be addictive, challenging, arousing, provoking, reactive, proactive, passionate etc. As we participate, we acknowledge our states together. I usually express how I was excited with the idea of garden to grow your own food. How I was dejected when I heard what they were doing to those poor rabbits or how they planned to exploit the 4 year olds. None of these waves really help. But as I watch what happened to me internally, I am able to relax my emotions, not being judgemental and proceed to explore a possibility.
In many projects that do not involve “live” participation of the soul like meaninglessly creating features just because they are possible, I tend to lose interest and become indifferent. My “Manas” is not in the right state of creation. Only thing to do is to stop it for few minutes and reflect on your “State”. If the state does not allow you to feel happy, satisfied and grow your mind, it's wiser to slow down. My mind would have revolted against me if i had chosen to sit next to the bio engineer helping him build a bionic part to the Pink Rabbit and helping the sales guy in making a video of its magic.
The above is a cyclic process. It is interested in well being of everything that we can perceive. It is an internal process to improvise one's own self. To question the core of who we are and what we want to do, not just blindly build things as we are capable of doing so is the what I think is Design thinking can be.
