Can Coronavirus Serve as Design Catalyst?
Famous French novelist Jean Baptise said,
‘‘Plus ça change, Plus c’est la même chose’’
Translation: The more things change, the more they’re the same.
Humans are slow to adapt
Technology changes rapidly but people & culture change slowly. Innovation takes years, if not decades. Consequently, innovation has a long nose. First seeds of modern day innovations are planted decades ago! Idea of video hologram communication dates back to 19th century.
However, people and society are not ready for these drastic innovations. Even when apparent benefits of innovation are shinny, society collectively gives resistance to new ideas. Nietzsche described this paradox really well when he said that, “Madness is rare in individuals — but in groups, parties, people and ages, it is the rule.”
Black Swans
Surprisingly, to restore balance throughout history, there have been events which have drastically changed human behaviour both at micro and macro levels. These events have served as paradigm shifts for our behaviours and societies. One class of such events are called Black Swans (term popularised by work of Nassim Nicholas Taleb). Black Swans are events that are highly improbable and hold substantial impact on humanity. Some examples are 9/11 attack, Chernobyl, Soviet Union collapse, economic crashes, etc.
All these black swan events have something in common:
a) They are outliers; they exist outside the realm of expectations.
b) They create extreme impact on humanity.
c) They’re retrospectively predictable (you can look back and say “oh we saw that coming!” by connecting the dots)
Mythbuster: Coronavirus is NOT a Black Swan.
Let me take a plot twist here. Government and corporates should stop hiding behind unpredictable black swan narrative and improve their performance and services.
Sure Coronavirus is causing extreme impact in terms of human lives and economic turmoil, and it is retrospectively predictable by seeing Ted Talk of Bill Gates where he warned about an upcoming biological pandemic — but to call it as an outlier will not be true as it has not emerged out of blue. It belongs to long established RNA virus family which are agents for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). We should have been better prepared.
Already in this century we have seen several outbreaks like SARS in 2004, H1N1 in 2009 and Ebola crisis in 2015.
Psychologically, our pop culture has low-key planted seeds of this outbreak dystopia in our minds by films like World War Z, Contagion, The Walking Dead and famous videogame The Last of US.
Systems 2.0 & Design Opportunities
Now, when we have established this virus is not a curse from the Gods but was rooted in our Earth’s fabric, it’s right time we stop deflecting the main issues and take ownership. There are tremendous opportunities waiting to be unlocked. This is still the greatest time to be alive as a human being! We are more equipped now than ever before to fight and cure this pandemic.
I sincerely hope that we, as a global society, evolve from this situation and not just pass through. I’m ever so hopeful in the strength of human will power to create systems 2.0 which is built on climate, health and empathetic foundations rather than just money and numbers. I hope our decision makers are seeing the fundamental flaws in our corporate, bank, education and schooling systems. Now is the right and best time to redesign!
Below I’ll be mentioning some design opportunities:
Business Models — Design for Value!
We are living in age of excellence where you need to design something exciting that is visually, functionally, ecologically and economically sustainable. In order to achieve that, we have to shift our business models more on value creation than just revenue generation.
Value is subjective. Values are small moments of safety, security and magic. All these fragments of moments combine to yield our social happiness. And the business models that are designed to tap into social happiness will accelerate into growth.
This is a fantastic opportunity for home cooks to provide healthy and clean food to their neighbourhoods. A simple loudspeaker can do the marketing here: “hey today I’m cooking mix vegetables! place your orders by calling..” You serve one home well and boom — you unlock growth hacking where your customers become your ambassadors!
Perhaps for the first time in hair dressing and hair cutting service, we are about to see a massive overhaul in business model. Book a hair dresser to your home will become a new norm. This business model will primarily focus on hygiene, innovation and accessibility — and if done right, customers will be willing to pay premium.
Service & Mindset (Re)Design!
This pandemic has presented us with a lens to see the flaws in multiple services. Government services, banking services, health services and education services. A simple sketch of user journey map can identify these flaws and we can collectively target spots for innovation.
Without going into details of these services, I’ll focus more on the mindset problem. To change anything, you’ve first train your mind. Learning to unlearn has become a forgotten art.
The thing is, most designers already knew about these faults. The C layer or upper management in these sectors were blinded towards these ‘cute design’ suggestions as they were trained and nurtured to see the business from the perspective of numbers and revenue.
Staying home and remote connection offers us this redemption opportunity for focusing on the ‘right’ and ‘needful’ things. We need to bid farewell to old process focused ‘always been like this’ mindset.
To achieve this, designers also need to up their game and figure out a way to translate their work into business needs. The question should not be “what design team is offering to the company” but rather “what design driven company can offer to the customers”.
For leaders, they have to stop taking design as a gut feeling. There has to be threshold level of customer understanding among all executives. They have to adapt an analytical approach to design just as there is for revenues and numbers.
Design for Humanity!
In the end, I hope to convey this idealistic dream where design is not confined to a product/service problem but it is taken as a mindset to solve real world problems like poverty and climate change.
This calls for systems thinking. This calls for paradigm shift form human centred design to humanity centred design. It’s a big jump as the former is still not established completely and its mastery requires immense dedication and constant learning.
But to reach humanity centred design, one must ask tough questions:
Is design mature yet to combat humanity problems?
Is design leadership mature yet to sit with world leaders?
And most importantly,
Are designers ready to take this big jump…?
