Design and Design Thinking: Context and Culture Matter

Last week, I was hosting a panel as a part of The Now Fest. This was a very special panel. For one, we had speakers from Pakistan, West Indies, Brazil and India. Secondly, the theme was very topical — context —something that often gets lost in the discourse on deign and design thinking, and thanks to the organizers at The Now Fest, we had a very incisive discussion going.

Let me introduce the experts to you. Lourenço Bustani , the co-founder of Mandalah, a Brazil-based organization that practices and propagates conscious innovation. Steve Ouditt, a design practitioner, and Senior Lecturer of Art and Design at The University of the West Indies. Param, a design guru and head of design at Fractal Analytics. Raheel Waqar, the founder of Pakistan based White Rice, a behavioral science led social impact organization.

In what follows is a summary of the key discussion points around a few anchor questions. I hope you would find them useful.

How do you define a good design and design thinking?

For Lourenco a good design starts with a combination of passion and social consciousness, and not profit centricity, which according to him is the cause of great distress, including the ongoing pandemic. For him, design thinking calls for intuition and striking an honest dialogue with various stakeholders, which his organization has been trying since 2006.

Being a designer and a teacher of design, Steve identifies a real-world engagements as centric to good design and design thinking, and that stories is how a meaningful social change could be brought about. Steve comes across as a very passionate reader and a teacher, and urges us all to seek inspiration from our local environments, something that we often take for granted.

Param, a pragmatic designer, reduces design thinking to two words — empathy and creativity, and, through scores of examples from his stints with Dr. Reddy’s and IDEO, elucidates how design must go truly beyond designers to result in real-world impact.

The very humble Raheel identifies utility, simplicity, and beauty as the three qualifiers of a good design, and that one must be honest to the problem and flexible with the methods to be able to get to the solve wicked problem at scale. Through compelling narratives from his social initiatives at Pakistan since 2006, Raheel passionately argues how small wins can pave the way for nudging people into adopting habits that benefit them and the society.

Where has design thinking failed?

There is no dearth of literature and case studies on the wonders of design (thinking), but we seldom talk about the boundary conditions of it, and the cases where your best laid plans fail to make a sustainable impact.

The very thoughtful Lourenco is quick to identify ‘self centricity’ as the key impediment to the adoption of design thinking. He says that corporates often shy away from asking and answering some hard hitting questions, and remain surficial in their treatment to the societies where they draw a lot from.

As for Steve, design thinking starts to fracture as people lose a bearing of their local contexts and look for inspirations elsewhere. Drawing parallels with systems thinking, Steve advocates problem solvers to be thinking more holistically and looking around more often.

Param identifies the risk of designers taking over design thinking, and that not tying up design thinking to a corporate’s purpose can be detrimental to the overall progress and impact.

For Raheel scaling the promising ideas to make a lasting impact doesn’t come merely by sticking to design thinking, and that’s where he and his team has found value in behavioral sciences to nudge the audience into thinking and acting differently. The sweet spot of design + nudge has worked in his realm a lot more.

What’s your advise for the practicing designers and problem solvers?

This remains my favorite question and the answers were equally diverse and incisive.

Lourenco advises designers to encourage diversity and human voices, and engage in a deeper dialogues. Steve would want you to read Don Norman, practice making rich pictures, and having a coffee with him while talking about stuff beyond work. Param would warn you from attending yet another workshop on design thinking, and rather practicing it while cultivating curiosity, an experimentative attitude, and focusing on emotions. And Raheel advises us all to fall in love with the problem, immerse yourself in the native context, and experiment voraciously.

In all, a very humbling experience, and I must thank Prakash Sharma of 1001 Stories for putting the event together and considering me for moderating this fantastic panel.

Sharing the session video for a deep dive.