Learning To Think Holistic Design.
Edition #141
Introduction
Welcome to The ContraMind Code.
The ContraMind Code provides you with a system of principles, signals, and ideas to aid you in your pursuit of excellence.
The newsletter shares the source code through quick snapshots for a systems thinking approach to be the best in what you do.
The Code helps you reboot and reimagine your thinking by learning from the best and enables you to draw a blueprint on what it takes to get extraordinary things done. Please share your valuable thoughts and comments and start a conversation.
Take a journey to www.contraminds.com. Listen and watch some great minds talking to us about their journey of discovery of what went into making them craftsmen of their profession to drive peak performance.
Design Sinking.
Design has become mainstream, and no day passes when we hear companies, boards, leaders, and technologists talk about the importance of design in products or services. This article by Brian Collins and J A Ginsberg shatters and questions some of the preconceived notions and standard design thinking templates that are followed, which has led to the deterioration of this important craft.
Here are some thoughts from the article for you to reflect on and apply your mind to:
‘Design thinking has been turned into a commodity, reducing design to a suite of skill sets and toolkits slickly packaged and sold to executives as an innovation process that almost anyone (but especially anyone with an MBA) can quickly master. Now add to the mix a blinkered “human-centered” focus, and brace for a reductionist disaster.’
‘If we keep pulling out packs of Post-Its® to groupthink our way out of this mess, we will never get out of this mess.’
‘Our job as designers is to help companies and organizations imagine their places in the future — to understand, communicate, and create what’s possible. We need to look beyond the stakeholders of today and think about who else might be stakeholders two, five, and even 10 years from now.’
‘But even before we think about stakeholders, we need to think about stakes. The internal combustion engine brought the world into a modern era of mass production, urban growth, and speedy transport. It literally paved the way for suburban sprawl, supermarkets, and traffic jams.’
‘What we need are companies and organizations to make these better answers real answers. Now, at scale. And fast. The stakes, at every scale, couldn’t be higher. Or the opportunities greater.’
You can read the entire article here.
Acquired Live(With Daniel Ek, Emily Chang, Jensen Huang and Mark Zuckerberg.
This is a great case study of next-generation marketing by companies or brands. It has several firsts to its credit:
How to build genuinely engaging marketing content in collaboration with companies—in this case, Acquired Podcast had a partner in JP Morgan Payments to create a live event of this scale—over 6,000 Acquired fans. I am sure there were JP Morgan clients, prospects, and invitees to listen to the show.
How companies must identify and partner with the right content marketers who can add value to their brand proposition and not just sponsor but find ways to curate valuable content together.
How to convert podcasts into event casts.
How to engage and create a truly engaging time for audiences. It is essential for brands to create a dialogue with audiences and make the time they spend with the brand valuable for them.
The real lesson here is that if the content is engaging, relevant, and tied at the hip to what a brand stands for, it can be a potent combination.
Sergey Brin | All-In Summit 2024
What will strike you in this conversation with Sergey Brin is his incredibly thoughtful answers to some tough questions. As a leader, you sometimes defend some of your decisions and refuse to accept the downside or see the other side's point of view. Here, you can see him perfectly at ease and highly spontaneous with his answers.
Also, his ability to admit honestly that Google was far behind when Chat GPT was launched and how they are closing the gap, which he measures closely. Given the position Google holds in the world, Sergey also reacts positively to the fact that Googlers must be OK to take risks, release features before they may be fully ready or waiting to perfect them entirely and be comfortable with some embarrassment, in case something goes wrong.
Finally, you can see him saying that he continues to read research papers and experiment and that even though AI was at the lowest of the priorities in his college days in the ‘90s, he is keeping up with his passion for coding, which is phenomenal after so many long years and the success he has had. He also mentions that he builds and tests these AI models in adjacent applications like education, gaming, etc. That’s one way to keep your skills up-to-date and try things which will keep you in tune with the changing times as you get to the top.
Just click on the above link and watch this conversation.
Learning To Think Holistic Design.
The article on ‘Design Sinking’ emphasized the need to think about any design holistically because it is not just about the product or service idea. It is also vital to consider and include possible stakeholders in the future and the societal impact it can create in your design.
Though it sounded simple, many companies' products don’t pay enough attention to these details. The example of the ‘plastic bottle’ design was a hard-hitting one - while it seems like a convenient and powerful human-centric design, the downstream impact of its indestructibility has now created a significant danger to the environment. Another point on the downsides of making any design ‘consensus thinking’ in the name of human-centric design was also made very emphatically. This message, too, was a very hard-hitting one. The three key takeaways when it comes to ‘Holistic Design’ are the ability to see the long-term implications of any product/design you create, consider future stakeholders five or ten years from now and stay away from ‘consensus thinking’ when it comes to design. These stuck like glue in the mind.
When you apply these thoughts further, some interesting learnings come our way. Since the emergence of processed food on supermarket shelves, fast food culture and, more recently, quick-commerce, these have led to many product and tech-led platform innovations around food design, food processes, quick delivery, etc. However, they have also led to the rise of ‘consumption pandemic’ leading to growing health-related crises like obesity, heart attacks, and other similar diseases. The question to ask ourselves is - ‘convenience at what cost?’ Could the same convenience have been designed better, knowing fully well the large-scale health hazards it can create?
Similarly, digital products and services designed, produced and marketed over the last few decades have significantly increased knowledge access and information availability. However, the increasing rise in mental health issues, attention deficit and anxiety disorders are significant psychological problems that need to be tackled today. The question to ask ourselves again is: ‘How could we have designed them better?’
More recently, with the rapid adoption of AI across industries and businesses, it is essential to think about the implications of AI on every human’s cognitive abilities, like critical thinking and reasoning, creativity, etc. Not to mention, issues around cyber security, fraud, and deepfakes are also a cause for serious concern.
“Would we be able to predict any of these impending dangers ahead of any product design, adoption and rapid growth?” The answer seems to be a clear no. However, what rail guards can be created and embedded in every product design and innovation needs serious attention in the design and thinking of such ideas.
One product category where we could learn critical tenets of the ‘Holistic Design’ principle is automotive, where they have continued designing and building cars that can run at really high speeds with a lot of technology in them. However, they have also designed customised control systems within their car systems to alert people if the speed limit is crossed( a sort of self-regulation). Then, some rules and regulations are set up by the government to keep them under check further. If there are violations, there are fines, and if one exceeds a certain number of violations, then the driving license is withdrawn. The checks and balances of ‘product design-self design-society design’ are beautifully balanced in this design. Studying how this evolved since automotive became mainstream as a transport since the 1920s will be interesting.
Here are some thoughts on how the ‘holistic design’ approach could be applied:
If excessive screen time is used, OTT companies like Netflix could consider triggering proactive alerts for binge viewing. They can have a built-in algorithm that recommends lower usage or recommendations with some other incentive that could benefit both the customer and Netflix’s business. They could also have a recommended average usage per day cut-off or pricing.
Similarly, quick commerce companies can highlight, on the orders made, the excessive calories added for the week, fortnight, month, etc., which could be reduced or balanced with alternative products.
There can also be a case for cosmetic and beauty products or even e-commerce firms recommending more chemical-free products or brands.
Fast-food companies or brands could build a connected or open wellness stack to achieve a specific daily health or fitness regimen. For example, health and automotive insurance companies are now personalising premiums through unit pricing based on behaviour.
Similarly, banks and credit card companies can create a self-regulated credit score for spending versus saving, which could act as a toll gate for customers' awareness of the likelihood of sizeable impulsive spending sprees, lower credit scores, and, therefore, restricted access to such financial services.
In the future, it may be essential to think about product design ideas and the potential risks they may carry to individuals and the community. There is a need to find ways to embed controls in the design and find innovative features to keep those risks under check.
If designs must be ‘truly’ breakthrough yet ‘socially’ empowering, it requires a delicate balance between ‘radical’ and ‘empathetic’ design thinking.
Some of the lessons we learnt from this week’s mission:
When designing products or services, we must understand and embrace long-term issues and avoid ‘consensus-driven thinking’ if they need to be disruptive and game-changing.
Brands need to learn how to curate and fuse great content, as this will be the only way they can engage their audiences in the future.
Even the most competent companies in the world don’t know how and when they get complacent. The only way to break complacency is to take risks and be ready to experiment and get embarrassed.