Enlightening Your Design Thinking?

A small story to begin with, should enlighten our day:

As usual, the father is busy in his daily chores. Being a hectic day at work from home, he gets annoyed when his young daughter loomed before him, and asked “Papa, can you play with me now.” but he couldn’t afford to spend time with his adorable daughter, nor did he want to disappoint the little one. He was in a fix and while thinking how to sail through this situation, a map printed in magazine lying on table appeared to be his savior.

Getting into quick action, the father separated a paper (from magazine) which had a world map in it and tore it and make them into few pieces a jigsaw puzzle then handed over the pieces to his daughter by telling “Sweetie, let’s start with a small fun task which I will give you. These pieces has a world map in it. You just have to re-arrange the map to its original form, will you?”(He thought the kid will take not less than a couple of hours to re-arrange). Amazed with his buttering words, without even doubting, she said “sure papa, why not. I will arrange them” and walked into her room. The father now had a sigh of relief and with a sly smile on his face.

In just 10 minutes, the daughter called “Papa, please come to my room?”. Getting up hesitantly, he started walking towards her room and to his sheer surprise, the puzzle was perfectly done. He was startled when he asked the little one “How could you do this so fast, sweetie? Did you complete it yourself or did you do any cheating?”. Maintaining the sweet smile on her face, the daughter explained –

“Papa, once I started re-arranging pieces into the map, I observed that there was a picture of a beautiful smiling girl on the other side. So I just re-arranged to get back the smiling girl’s picture and in-turn the actual puzzle was also completed.”

Having taken aback, the father kissed his daughter with a great sense of pride and hugged her tight.

We all would have faced similar situations in life, which teaches us few lessons like:

? Not under-estimating others capabilities

? Not assuming ourselves to be very smart

? Prioritizing things in life

? Not mis-using others innocence etc…

And, most importantly, the point I would like to make is

THINKING FROM A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE. Most of us assume that the way we think is always correct. We hardly challenge the status quo, think of alternatives, move out of comfort zone and be bold enough to face reality.

Thinking from different perspective is one of the main aspects which leads to great User Experience, through disruptive thinking.

User experience is not just a set of tools, skills, tips and tricks but it is all about visualizing the world around you in different perspectives and using this disruptive thought to solve even the most simple complex problem a user (thereby the world) is facing and tackle the situation with the right mindset, approach and thinking.

By applying this thought in business, we can create an entirely un-tapped market (or replace existing market), add value to our customers and society, thereby becoming responsible citizens.

From today, why not we start applying the disruptive thinking method, wherever possible, to find solutions to our problems. I am sure we will all be amazed with the solutions and results we get. Let’s give it a try!

Thank you for reading my articles, please be in-touch with me to build like-minded network.

Manisuresh, Lead UX Designer, Neutrinos.co, Banglaore, India.