The presentation accompanying a talk I recently gave to PG Design Management students at MIT Institute of Design, Pune. The session went on for close to 4 hours. But the basic thrust of the talk is captured in this presentation: Design has the potential to be driver of business growth | But, we need to look at Design through a different lens | Beautiful Design Vs. Intelligent Design | Aesthetic and Cognitive Design | The epedemic of Marketing Communication | The Crisis of Differentiation

1. HEADSUP!
While I’m giving a boring introduction,
think of an example of bad design you’ve
encountered
MIT INSTITUTE OF DESIGN, PUNE | OCTOBER 1, 2009 | PG DESIGN MANAGEMENT

2. DESIGN is the new
TECHNOLOGY
Design is poised to be the growth driver for
businesses in the next two decades, just as
technology was in the last two.
*But, not ‘design’ as we know it!

3. A few THOUGHTS
on DESIGN
in BUSINESS

4. BAD DESIGN
Give me one example of BAD DESIGN
you’ve encountered

5. THE TWO
DESIGN LENSES
AESTHETIC Design
and
COGNITIVE Design

6. 1 2
3
Which of these
three bikes do
you think is the
most ‘MACHO’?

7. WHAT?!
BAJAJ spent more than Rs.100 crore to
convince you that their bikes were
“definitely male”!
Have you ever seen an advertisement from Royal
Enfield, much less one telling you what you should
think of their bikes?

8. BRAND
is an emotional response that a product
or service evokes in your gut.
It cannot be generated by clever
advertising slogans, only by brilliant
products and services.

9. If a brand looks like a duck
and swims like a dog,
customers will distrust it

10. Have you seen an advertisement
for any of these brands?

11. HOW
did they become the biggest cult brands
of our generation?
WHY
are people passionate about Linux and
Firefox? Why do we LOVE Google?

12. BEAUTIFUL Vs. INTELLIGENT
DESIGN
The ubiquitous STD PCO sign is actually the
packaging for the billing machine.

13. We are not artists or poets. We are
artisans and craftsmen. OUR
PRODUCTS SOLVE PROBLEMS.
They do not hang on museum walls!
DAN LACIVITA, Executive Director, First Born

14. Designing for the CUSTOMER
VS.
Designing for YOURSELF

15. The DISCONNECT between
BRAND PROMISE
and DELIVERY
Advertising ‘Customer
friendliness’ does not
reconcile with 6-minute
wait times on helpline

16. The HDFC BANK maze
The first time I went to deposit a cheque…

17. How are they DIFFERENT?

18. What DIFFERENTIATES them?

19. THE CRISIS OF
DIFFERENTIATION
Products and Services are increasingly
becoming similar in features, pricing,
customer service, touchpoints…
…and most brands seem to be relying only on
communication to position and differentiate themselves

20. Remember ZooZoos?
Yes, they were cute. But what did they do
for Vodafone? Did you shift to Vodafone
because of ZooZoos?

21. TATA DOCOMO, with its per second
billing, added 3.4 million subscribers in
August (the highest ever in India), toppling
Airtel as the faster growing Mobile
company after many years.

22. VALUE.
No matter how BEAUTIFUL your design or
how clever or witty your advertising
slogan is, it means nothing….
…if the product or service you are selling
does not CREATE VALUE for the customer

23. “DESIGNED
by APPLE in CALIFORNIA,
assembled in China”

24. EVENTUALLY
most companies will outsource
manufacturing, logistics, accounting,
customer service, marketing and every
other business function…
EXCEPT
the DESIGN of their product/service and
their business model

25. If your only tool is a hammer,
every problem looks like a nail
ABRAHAM MASLOW

26. ORGAN DONATION
the old way: Communication

27. OPT-OUT ORGAN
DONATION
Instead of asking people to proactively
sign-up for organ donation, how about
giving them a choice to opt-out?
A town in America tried this and reached a donation
rate of 60% compared to 38% national average.

28. How can we make people use the
stairs more often?

29. How can we encourage more people
to vote?

30. How do we get people to come to the
GYM more regularly?

31. COMMUNICATION
HAMMER
Most agencies and designers will hammer away at these
question with communication answers… posters,
newsletters, videos, virals, ads, all beautifully designed!
But a deeper, more cognitive ‘design
approach’ can yield answers that
meaningfully change the service/process to
influence user behaviour

32. Why I buy books at a small,
non-airconditioned, badly lit store,
about an hour’s journey from my house
…because I can buy chocolates at my neighbourhood grocery
store too!

33. EXPERIENCE
DESIGN
does NOT mean adding bells and whistles to
an otherwise ordinary offering. Ambient
lighting, cute furniture, fancy uniforms and a
designer décor are shallow, off-the shelf
design solutions…
To truly design an experience, we need to
take a strong core offering and build layers
of relevant and meaningful services around it

34. If you read only one
book in 2009, read
NUDGE.
*BARACK OBAMA did!

35. RUN
From Jargon and fancy titles
READ
Everything. Shampoo labels. Psychology
books. Auto Magazines. Currency Notes.
LOVE/HATE
Feel passionately. Don’t ever let indifference
creep into your choices.

36. www.gutse.in
GUTS SERVICE DESIGN

37. We use logic to prove and
intuition to discover
HENRI POINCARE
French mathematician, theoretical physicist and ‘philosopher of science’