Impact-Driven Category Design

Meet Our Impact Driven-Category Designer in Residence

If you are a founder, entrepreneur, or fellow designer, who believes category creators should account for impact from the outset, then this bit is for you!?

I'm pleased to introduce Karthiga Ratnam, the impact-driven category designer in residence at Reins Group and the Co-Founder of Atomic Curiosity.?In her own words, Karthiga explains why impact matters to her:

"Impact can take many forms; Social, Cultural, Economic, Technological, Environment, Personal Emotional. Categories, when created well, become ecosystems, and ecosystems have multiple stakeholders. They aren't always within the immediate purview of the company. Functional category leaders like Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon create polarization of wealth, market share. When I became a category designer, it was apparent that social, planetary, and community impact needs to be considered from the outset.?

When I create purposeful impact-driven categories, I name them to reflect the impact and purpose that the category should stand for. Impact design for categories encompasses – the value, the impact, and the movement that the brand hopes to inspire. It defines the socio-cultural, moral, and environmental boundaries for the category. It's the 4th element of category creation.

Humanity is facing an existential crisis. The climate emergency and the problems that go with it threaten the planet that we call home. The world needs category creators. The world needs a whole lotta different thinking.

In highly simplistic terms, category creation centers on the “magic triangle.”? The three elements that make up the triangle — Category Design, Product Design, and Company Design. Companies such as Google, Netflix, Apple, Facebook are all category creators and leaders. But as category creators and leaders, these companies have also amassed power. This is why I propose applying the Peter Parker Principle (with great power comes great responsibility) to category creation. A 4th element to the category design triangle — called “Impact Design.”

Central to impact design for category creation is that categories shouldn’t be functional; they should be behavioral/principled/conscientious. For example:?

• Smartphone — functional
• Restorative Foods* - behavioral

*“Restorative eating” is a term that essentially has to do with purposefully consuming certain foods to heal the body.

Is Impact-Driven Category Design for you?

Category design is not for the faint of heart. It’s a strategic initiative, and it's hard. It’s not a silver bullet to gaining market share. Impact-driven category design is even more challenging because you have to adhere to checks and balances.”

Meet one of our clients: Impact Entrepreneur Liviu Babitz

Liviu, co-founder, and CEO of CyborgNest has more than 10 years of experience in creating cutting-edge technology to impact humanity in Human Rights and Human Enhancement for the Metaverse era.? Just like Karthiga, Liviu explains in his own words:?

"Imagine that you have never sensed the taste of chocolate, heard the sound of thunder, or saw the stars. We experience the world through the input we receive from our senses. Yet, due to our limited sensory palette, we are blind to a large part of the reality around us or experience less of it due to malfunctioning senses. Now imagine that we have more senses as the animal kingdom does… A bat glides through pulses of sonar, whales communicate with vibrations across the vast valleys of the deep oceans, dogs perceive the passage of time using their extensive olfactory receptors, and the full spectrum of light from the ultraviolet to the infrared - still waits to be seen.

When our eyes saw the sky, we thought of flying and exploring space, and when we experienced the sweet scent of a rose, we created perfume. At CyborgNest, our vision is to develop non-invasive, permanent sensory enhancement technology that interfaces the human brain with the hidden parts of nature that are thus far untapped by our natural senses.?

Thanks to our neuroplasticity, when humanity is equipped with new senses, it will open up our brain's capacity to further compensate for sensory malfunctioning or think and create in novel ways.

We invest in humans, not machines; we strive to develop innovative technologies that expand the human perception of the world. We aim to create technology that makes us more human, connecting us to the planet and the people on it, and even extend our sensory reach to space, and in doing so enriching our life experience.”

The problem Liviu and his team are solving now

100 years ago our lives were almost static. Today we are in constant movement, offline and online. We are lost and it causes inefficiency, stress, and disconnection. Which new sense will help us from further getting lost in the new emerging Metaverse and AR/VR world while keeping us grounded and connected??

One of Liviu’s and his team’s brainchildren is the Sentero, a smart haptic orientation device equipped with multiple sensors and abilities.? The device allows its wearers to:

• Sense the magnetic field of the planet in relation to their orientation.
• Sense the location of people related to their orientation.
• Allow others to experience their physical metrics, such as the heartbeat.
• Establish haptic directional communication through tapping (Haptic Emojis).
• Sensing the location of places (addresses, memories, the international space station…) related to your orientation.

Does it enhance people’s lives? I was deeply touched by the testimonial of Zack, one of the pilot users of the Sentero, and I believe that you will too. Watch it here: https://youtu.be/y3cLNITJ6-Q

What is fascinating from an evolutionary point of view, is the fact that the new senses have the same impact on all types of people. Liviu and his team have run the beta testing also on the general public, and here are the results: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4c56GZM4gI

Coming out of a pandemic and going into a Metaverse world, we now understand how orientation and connectivity are more important than ever and these guys are on to something really important for us all.?

It’s people like Karthiga and Liviu who strive for a positive impact and create the Planet and People-first businesses we so desperately need. I’m so privileged to have the opportunity to work with them.?

Feel free to drop by for a virtual cup of coffee to get to know each other. We'd love to hear from you. https://calendly.com/jef-teugels/get-2-know

Kindest regards,