Design Being

Being designers before becoming designers.

This piece is not about the flurry of Design Thinking activity confusing the hell out of people. I’ve been watching, workshopping—waiting for the smoke to clear and for the mirrors to show through. Isn’t Design Thinking simply a matter of common sense? The business of Design thinking is onion-esque, layered with different meanings and begging for a clear understanding of what it can and cannot achieve for businesses and brands. Remember the story of the six blind men and the elephant?

The parable of the blind men and an elephant originated in ancient Indian subcontinent, from where it has widely diffused, but broadly goes as follows: 

A group of blind men heard that a strange animal, called an elephant, had been brought to the town, but none of them were aware of its shape and form. 

Out of curiosity, they said: "We must inspect and know it by touch, of which we are capable". 

So, they sought it out, and when they found it they groped about it. In the case of the first person, whose hand landed on the trunk, said "This being is like a thick snake". 

For another one whose hand reached its ear, it seemed like a kind of fan. 

As for another person, whose hand was upon its leg, said, the elephant is a pillar like a tree-trunk. 

The blind man who placed his hand upon its side said, "elephant is a wall". Another who felt its tail, described it as a rope. 

The last felt its tusk, stating the elephant is that which is hard, smooth and like a spear.

The blind men then discover their disagreements, suspect the others to be not telling the truth and come to blows. The stories also differ primarily in how the elephant's body parts are described, how violent the conflict becomes and how (or if) the conflict among the men and their perspectives is resolved. In some versions, they stop talking, start listening and collaborate to "see" the full elephant.

Moral: While one's subjective experience is true, it may not be the totality of truth. 

This is what seems to be happening to Design Thinking as well. Two reasons – first, design itself has inflated meanings and second because everybody wants to jump into the fray for fear of missing out. While on elephants, I like to think of Design Thinking as the new elephant in the room. An unspoken thesis drives Design thinking programs, each coming at the client with the promise of a magical methodology to pamper the needs of today’s customer psyche. David Kelly, founder of IDEO started it. First he called this “new” way of boardroom strategy Design Thinking, for what reason only he knows. Or not. 

Olof Schybergson, CEO at Fjord (now Accenture) believes design thinking only has value when followed up with design doing and supported by a strong design culture. He calls it the Design Rule of 3, which can effectively unlock the full potential of design in an organisation.

“…design thinking is crucial to improving everything from the value of a company’s offering to reimagining the employee experience. But misunderstanding what it is and how best to apply it risks sidelining design thinking into just another passing management fad. The reason is simple: design thinking is just the beginning — a catalyst. What’s critical is to convert theory into reality to catalyze change.” 

-Olof Schybergson, Fjord

On closer inspection, it’s the design culture part that deserves a closer look—what is design culture anyway? Enter Design Being. 

Design Being is a way of life; being is not just a learnable set of skills and mindsets, going deeper into understanding what attracts a designer to the design discipline [sic.] in the first place. Which reminds us of the Eastern philosophy of Svadharma, that we have a duty to be true to our individual nature—  

“It is more enjoyable to be ourselves than to pretend to be someone else. The duties born of our nature can be easily performed with stability of mind and soul." Krishna emphasizes this point dramatically by saying that it is better to die in the faithful performance of one’s duty than to be in the unnatural position of doing another’s duty.

Bhagavad Gita [Chapter 3 verse 35]

Agreed, in the context of the business world it may, at first instance, seem extreme to import something from a spiritual text but remember we are trying to make a case for Design Being, being being a verb. So when did it all start for me? When did I discover that design was something I was drawn to strongly enough to go against the grain?

Let’s see …

I’m trying to go back to why I chose design over other “standard” professional choices. Now that I think of it, I can see that my love affair with design started way earlier in life, perhaps as early as childhood. I can’t say I was conscious of any of the aspects of my personality that would lead me to the world of design. 

We lived in a small village in the back of beyond in southern India on the campus of a ceramic plant, the largest sanitary ware manufacturer in India. My father was its CEO and we kids had the privilege of free passage through the plant. I must have been 10 or 11 and was home from boarding school for winter holidays. One of those mornings I walked with Dad to his office and asked him if I could go do something in the plant. To humour me, he asked the R&D folks to show me around the lab. The next two weeks I found myself excitedly trudging to the lab and working all day to complete my “project”, a ceramic artist’s palette – shaped like an oversized betel leaf. 

The following year, I wanted to “make” a Chemistry lab by constructing a shed outside our living room. I bought test tubes, beakers, flasks, etc. to line up on the shelf behind the counter-top and a box full of chemicals from the hobby store. Different matter that once the lab was set up, I lost all interest in doing Chemistry experiments. Dad had to write off the entire “experiment”.

A few years later, following my father’s example, I offered to fix our Sony cassette player. I took it apart with the dexterity of a qualified technician, meticulously lining up each screw and washer alongside sub-assemblies on the tablecloth. I put it back together quite well I think, but it never played a single track again. As long as Dad was around (God Bless his soul), he would jokingly refer to my juvenile losses as Research & Development expenses. 

I'm asking myself what really are the characteristics of Design being? Does it have anything to do with our nature, our Svadharma, something we are born with, or is it something we grow into based on where we grow up, what we do, how we live? The most plausible argument is that a combination of factors contributes to attaining the state of design being. But is the realm of the plausible sufficient?

I believe not. Could it have to do with humans being (sic.) wired? Probably.

Wire away then people, wire away.