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Design Thinking: An Introduction to the Uninitiated

by on 14 March 2016in Praveen Udupa

Suppose you have a severe stomach ache (God forbid), and you go see your doctor. You imagine you might have appendicitis and tell your doctor as such. If your doctor responds, “Oh dear! You might be right. Let’s not waste any time. The operation theatre is free right now. How about we put you down for an appendectomy immediately?” What would you think of this doctor? Obviously you wouldn’t think too highly of his skills as a doctor. You would expect the doctor to have the common sense to first diagnose the issue before venturing into a solution.

But when we come to solving everyday problems, I wonder why we check our common sense at the door. Look around you. There are plenty of examples of Band-Aid solutions. There is severe traffic congestion in a city intersection. Let’s build an over-pass flyover, only to decongest that intersection and promptly move the congestion over to the next intersection. My restaurant has severe over-crowding during peak hours. Implement a fancy Tablet based order management solution. Delhi reels under severe pollution. Let’s implement Odd-Even formula. In this age of technology, almost everyone instantly jumps to an IT based solution.

Design Thinking is an approach to problem solving and innovation. Design Thinking is a set of structured thinking steps that promises to lead us towards a workable, long lasting solution to the real problem that is faced by the organization. There are five key steps in Design Thinking:

Step 1: Empathize. It means get into your client’s shoes and feel the problem. Experience the inconvenience that the issue causes to the client. Only when you truly empathize with your client, you will gain the perspective required to solve the problem.Step 2: Define. Real problems are never apparent at the surface. What is visible at the surface is always the symptom. The actual problems are the root causes buried underneath a pile of effects. Uncover the root causes to the symptom and define the problem clearly and accurately.

Step 3: Ideate. The thing about solutions is that it needs to work for this specific client, for these specific stakeholders. There are normally never one-size-fits-all solutions. It is therefore essential to brainstorm many possible solutions and pick a few that seems reasonable on paper.

Step 4: Prototype. Build a prototype of the solution. This is an actually working solution that may not be complete in all respects. The intention is to study the impact of the solution in a study environment.

Step 5: Test. Implement the prototype in the study environment and verify if it successfully eliminates the symptom, and that it does not create any other problems of its own. If the prototype is successful, great. Otherwise, go back to Step 3 and iterate until the right solution is determined.

Design Thinking puts the customer in the center; products / services are conceived as a means to solve the customers’ problems. Every individual must become a Design Thinker. Every start-up must adopt Design Thinking with gusto.

Mantras-for-the-mind

The Mantras of Running Effective and Efficient Operations

by on 14 March 2016in Admin

Have you ever found yourself in a position where the returns your business brings in as revenue is often barely sustaining your expenses? Or in an event where the processes seem to be not entirely under your control? You aren’t in unchartered waters. It’s an issue a lot of fresh ventures as well as some of the more experienced businesses run into. Businesses usually find themselves caught in the loop of overspending rather not optimising their expenses. The target here is to maximise the operational efficiencies of a business thereby creating profits and not just breaking even. Here are a few operational tips towards the same:

1. It’s not just about high revenue
Businesses often focus on increasing their revenue each month, every quarter, however forgetting that the total costs of production and management keep increasing with time. If the revenue increases but the business continues to spend a great deal of it, it will soon fizzle out and run into debts. The key here is to decrease expenses and spend prudently.2. Hire the right number of people and the right kind of people
When a business starts out, often the entrepreneurs themselves don multiple hats in a way of cost-cutting. Obviously this wouldn’t be a long-term arrangement. Instead, hiring a small team of multi-faceted self-learners who are capable of handling more than one area of work, or outsourcing as much of the laborious tasks like book keeping, marketing etc. to software shall prove to be better at the earlier stages.

3. Set up clear-cut processes
Some large enterprises make efficient, secure business processes a prerequisite for doing business with them. To develop efficient business processes that meet the requirements of your partners, your business needs a secure, reliable network infrastructure.

4. Communication is paramount
The problem often faced by businesses is when there isn’t a flow of communication or information gets miscommunicated as it gets passed on. It is important to establish definitive communicative channels with a follow-up mechanism in order to ensure that information is neither miscommunicated nor lost. This also increases accountability in the business.

5. Cutting corners isn’t a bad idea
Reduction in expenses which could be avoided in the initial stages like office supplies, furniture etc. whereby the business cuts corners without affecting the quality of the product is a smart thing to do. Rented furniture, shared office spaces etc. are some methods whereby businesses can increase its operational efficiency.