“Can you tell us what Design Thinking is in five-ten minutes?” I get this question often these days. Sometimes I am participating in a conference call and the participants want a gist of DT in a short time. In such situations I prefer to talk about the 3 E’s of design thinking: Experience, Empathy and Experimentation which address the three questions: What are we designing in DT? Where do we begin? And; How do we course-correct? Let’s look at each of them briefly.
Experience: Design Thinking is about designing experiences – ideally end-to-end experience. My father applied for a new passport a few weeks back as his current passport is about to expire. He was out of the passport office in half an hour. Before he could reach home, he began to get SMS messages telling how his application is progressing. His new passport arrived home in three days. This experience was radically different from what he had gone through when he applied for his passport for the first time twenty years back. Whether it is a movie, restaurant, grocery shopping, taxi, commute to work, performance appraisal, one-on-one meetings, we remember events in terms of experience they create for us. In particular, we tend to remember emotional highs and lows. Hence, design thinking focuses on the design of peak emotions – positive and negative. In my father’s case, the progress reporting of the passport application through SMS worked as an anxiety suppressing tool. And the delivery in three days of the new passport created a delight.
Empathy: Our emotional responses are strongly correlated to our anxieties and aspirations. In fact, a large part of our emotional response is supposed to be automatic – almost like a button press. Hence, DT suggests that we start with empathy, by understanding the anxieties and aspirations of our customers. This is not easy for multiple reasons. One, as Kiran Bedi realized on her first day as Inspector General (Prisons) at Tihar Jail in 1993, people may not trust you and hence they may not reveal what they feel. Second, people themselves may not be aware of their deeply held beliefs and Three, you may not know who your customer is. Hence, DT suggests that we do immersive research, which involves observing potential customers in action in their own context, focussing on gaining trust before going further in the interview process and if possible, trying to live like them – at least for a few days. This may lead to deeper insights which further help in framing the right challenge.
Experimentation: No matter how much one tries, one can never be confident that one has framed the right challenge. Moreover, a technologist may start with a solution – a mobile app or a new measurement device. In either case, DT suggests that you test your assumptions as often as you can by going back to the customers. This principle is called – fail early, fail often and fail inexpensively. In a complex environment, only rapid iterative experimentation can lead to the understanding of the right problem and hence a better solution. Hence, rapid prototyping is given a lot of emphasis in DT. If you are thinking of a new mobile app, can you quickly design screenshots and show to a few people and get their feedback? The rate of experimentation is considered very important. Hence, we look at ways of doing 1-hour, 1-day and 1-week prototypes.
In short, Design Thinking is about designing Experiences, Empathizing with customers and rapid and iterative experimentation.
We all carry some notion of order in our everyday life. For
example, when our room is in a mess, we say that it is disorderly. Alternately,
if the dinner table is arranged properly with the plates, spoons, glasses, we
say, things are in order. When we refer to order (or disorder) we are mostly referring
to only one type of order – explicit order – order perceived through our senses.
There is another type of order which is called implicit order. When we see a
seed sprouting, we assume that the tree-ness – with all its characteristics of
the shape, color, size - was implicit in the seed. Otherwise, how would it know
what kind of a tree it should turn into? That information about tree-ness which
is embedded in the seed is an example of the implicit order. Sprouting of the
seed is an example of how an explicit order (the tree) comes out of the
implicit order inside the seed. When the tree bears a fruit containing a seed,
the explicit order gets transformed into an implicit order. So in nature,
things are going back and forth between implicit and explicit order. Traditionally,
science has assumed that explicit order is more fundamental than implicit
order. But what if implicit order is more fundamental? That is what we will explore
in this article.
Let’s first try to get a better idea of what an order is. David
Bohm defines order as similar differences and different similarities. For
example, when we classify all living organisms into animals and plants, we are
observing different similarities – animals and plants as different among
similarity of living organisms. And when we see that one principle such as the
law of gravity governing so many types of motions, we are observing similar
differences – law of gravity as similarity among different types of motions.
When we fail to observe any order, we call it disorder or
randomness or chaos. Sometimes, what appears to be random has some order
implicit in it. For example, computers are known to generate random numbers.
However, what is underlying this random sequence of numbers is a program that
generates this sequence. Thus, if you know the program and the input it takes
(called seed), then the sequence is no longer random. Similarly, when we observe
a coastline in a map, say that of Mumbai, it may appear random. However, it is
known to carry the property of a fractal dimension – an order, an example of
similar differences, implicit in it. Thus
what is random in the explicit world, may have an order in its implicit
counterpart. For a cool demonstration on how explicit order turns into implicit order and vice versa, check out this video on ink droplet in glycerin experiment.
For the past several centuries, especially since the
scientific revolution of 16th century with discoveries from Galileo,
Newton, Descarte and later Darwin, Einstein, Watson-Crick etc. science has considered
explicit order as primary. But, what if the implicit order is really more
fundamental? And the explicit order is just a reflection or unfolding of an
implicit order – like the tree-ness in a seed unfolding into a tree? Science,
after all, hasn’t cracked the theory of everything yet, has it? So, it is
possible that implicit order is more fundamental. If so, what is its biggest
implication?
The biggest implication is that knowledge is always
incomplete. Why? Because, it is always based on explicit order. Any knowledge
is similar to knowing some characteristics of a tree based on its outer
features without knowing the underlying program that generates the tree from a
seed. By design, we won’t know implicit order, EVER.
If you really see what this means - i.e. knowledge is always
incomplete, then it may come to you as a rude shock. Because it would mean there
won’t be a theory of everything, EVER. Moreover, EVERYTHING that you know or
believe, especially values you cherish as absolutely true, in science,
religion, arts, society, in family relations is incomplete. It is tentative. It
may be relevant in your current context, but it may be irrelevant in some other
context. If you really see that every
knowledge as tentative, why would you ever be upset about anything?
All this is true, if implicit order is more fundamental than
explicit order. Of course, explicit order may indeed be more fundamental than
implicit order. Then, fighting for my knowledge, what I value, may be really
worth it.
Hope you at least consider the question open: What is more
fundamental, implicit or explicit order?
We are all busy solving what appear to each of us to be the important
problems. For example, for some of us, making more money may be the most important thing,
for some others, solving social problems like poverty, inequality, corruption, terrorism,
lack of education and healthcare may be the most important thing. But what if, we are all
solving the wrong problems? What if, we
are all missing the main point? That is the hypothesis I would like to explore
in this article. And I would like to use an analogy mentioned by David Bohm of his
dream involving two cats. Let’s start with the dream.
David Bohm was interviewed by Nobel Laureate Maurice Wilkins for American
Institute of Physics in twelve
sessions over a ten month period from June 6, 1986 to April 16, 1987. In the
interview
session 5 which took place on October 3, 1986, Bohm narrates following dream
which he had during the last phase of his tenure in Princeton in 1950-51:
I was staying in a certain house where they had a cat, and
in this dream, I came into the kitchen, and I saw the cat talking to another
cat, and making a date to meet at a certain time. I said, there must be
something wrong here. I wonder what it is. So I thought about it for a while,
and I said, oh yes. I know (what’s) wrong. Cats can’t tell time. So I
said to the cat, “You cats are not able to tell time.” The cat answered me back
and said, Of course we can tell time. And I said, “Well, look at the clock.
What time is it?” It was about three o’clock. It said, A quarter past eight,
five past nine. So I said, there (you go). That proves that cats can’t tell
time. And then I woke up laughing.
And what did this dream mean, according to Bohm? He says - I
simply took it for granted that cats can talk. And I said, “That’s very
mysterious.” How in the world can they tell time? They don’t have the equipment
for telling time. They never heard of time. So the meaning of the dream was
that something similar must be happening in society, that people are arguing
about small points, and they’re taking for granted some very obvious point that
should be staring us in the face.
So, what Bohm is saying is that when we argue about or try
to solve the problem of whether cats can tell time, we miss the main point. That
is, cats can’t talk. Are we all arguing about “how cats can’t tell time”? We
possibly are. Let me try to illustrate this using one of my recent meetings
with a friend.
I met this friend; let’s call him V, last week. V was
disturbed about the recent appointment of saffron clad firebrand Yogi as the
Chief Minister of the largest state in India. Why should this disturb V?
Because, he feels that events such as this are indicating that India’s secular
image is crumbling and V is concerned. V has tried to convince his friends that
India is heading in the wrong direction. But his friends haven’t bought his
argument. So V is kind of lost. He doesn’t know what to do.
Is V’s argument a kind of “cats can’t tell time” argument? It
is. So what is the main point V is missing? The main point is that the sustained
disturbance in his mind is an indicator that his perception is muddled up. If V
can’t see things clearly, how can he frame the correct problem? Even flights
don’t take off when the visibility is low, in spite of the sophisticated guiding
software.
So the main point is, are you able to see things clearly? Do
you have perceptual clarity? If not, chances are high, you are solving the
wrong problem, no matter how noble the problem is. How do you know if you have
perceptual clarity? Well, every sustained negative emotion, be it anxiety,
stress, anger, blame, guilt, envy, is an indicator that there is lack of perceptual
clarity.
So what should one do? Well, the first step is
to recognize that I may be missing the main point every time I am upset. That
creates an opening through which intelligence may flow through and it may show
us what is going on that is muddling up the perception.
Recently I finished reading “The
life of Isaac Newton” by Richard Westfall. It is a fairly detailed account
of Newton’s life. We study Newton’s theories from our school days. We would
have heard the story of “falling apple” multiple times. Newton’s fight with
Robert Hooke and his friendship with Halley was familiar with me. So I wasn’t
expecting any major surprises from this biography. And yet, I realized there
were several surprises in store for me. Here are 3 major surprises:
Systematic challenge
book: Nineteen year old Newton left his hometown Lincolnshire to join Trinity
College at Cambridge as a student in June 1661. Barring two extended visits
during the plague years, this was to be his home for the next eighteen years. Soon
Newton started reading the work of intellectual giants of his time like
Descartes, Galileo, Boyle and many others. However, he didn’t stop at just
reading. Sometime in 1664, Newton created 45 headings in a notebook under which
he would categorize the notes from his reading. The headings included – nature
of matter, place, time, and motion, cosmic order, tactile qualities such as
rarity, fluidity, softness, violent motion, light, colors, vision etc. He
titled the book “Quaestiones quaedam Philosophaea” – “Quaestiones” for short.
His notes would not be just copies of the interesting lines from the books he
read. They would have a questioning tone. For example, he would ask “Whither ye rays
of gravity may bee stopped by reflecting or refracting ym, if so a
perpetuall motion may bee made of these two ways.” He considered “Quaestiones”
important enough that he later composed an index.
By the winter of 1664-65, Newton made a list of “Problems”.
Initially he put down twelve and then modified the list to make it twenty two
problems put under five categories. This list would occupy Newton for the next
year. What surprised me is the systematic manner in which Newton created and
maintained his challenge book.
Universal gravitation
as a slow hunch: The story of falling of an apple and how it led to the
discovery of the universal law of gravitation is one of the most famous stories
in the history of science. It shows how a simple observation can lead to a deep
insight. Westfall goes to some length in the book to dispel the myth behind the
story. Yes, Newton did possibly have an insight when he observed a falling
apple in 1666. However, he worked on the theory of gravitation for almost next
twenty years. In fact, he systematically extended the scope of gravitation to
moon, then to other planets, then to comets and then to everything. By 1680, Newton still held the view that the
gravitational force is specific to the solar system which contained related
bodies. He corresponded with Flamsteed, Director
of Royal Astronomical Society, and obtained data about the motion of Jupiter’s satellites,
on the effect of the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn and also on the comets. For
two years, between 1684 to 1686, he almost locked himself up to focus on the
problem of gravitation. Eventually, he was convinced of the universality of the
law and he finished writing Principia in 1686. What surprised me in this case
is the way Newton step-by-step extended his theory to include more and more
objects by using real data from observatory over two decades.
Obsession with
self-image: Newton didn’t like
criticism. And he fought with almost everyone who questioned him. Once he believed in an idea, he went all out
to get whatever he can to show that he was right. If it meant stealing data so
be it. Once he considered a person to be his enemy, he made life very difficult
for the person. This became even more prominent once he became the President of
Royal Society and the manager of the Mint. For example, he stole data from
Flamsteed’s astronomical observations and didn’t let anyone else access it for
years. During his later years, he became obsessed with getting his portraits
done. As a President of the Royal Society, he established a practice that the
mace (a spray) be placed on the table only when the president was in the chair.
Newton’s obsession with his self-image surprised me.
Reading the biography, I wondered if Isaac
Newton was a beautiful mind with creativity, madness and no awakening. Who
knows?
Step-2 of our “8-steps
to innovation” book is “Create a challenge book”. When I visit any
organization, one of the first things I look for is a challenge book. Unfortunately,
very few places that I have visited were able to articulate top few challenges
clearly. Some of them discover in a leadership meeting that they don’t know
what the top challenges are or at least there is no consensus on what the top
challenges are. Without this clarity, it is difficult to focus innovation
efforts. What are the characteristics of a good challenge book? Here are three:
1.Current-ness:
What’s the point in making a list of challenges in an off-site and not updating
it until the next one? In fact, a challenge book should be current like an
airline arrival/departure list. OK, perhaps not that current. But it should be
current within at least a few weeks. It is possible that the few top challenges
may not change within weeks. It also helps to retire challenges which are not
relevant any more.
2.Prioritization:
Earlier this week, I got an opportunity to meet the manager of a new
product development team of one of the largest e-commerce companies in India. The
product manager was candid enough to articulate some of the tough challenges he and his team is focusing on. However, his team is relatively small – ten people. I asked him
how he prioritizes his challenges. He said that he is still learning. The team
used to change the priorities every day a few years back. Then they learnt to
hold the priorities for at least a month. Now, the team is learning to set
priorities for a quarter. Without prioritization or with rapidly changing prioritizing the team can be lost. Besides the toughest challenges don't vanish in a day or two, perhaps even in a quarter or two.
3.Championing:
This characteristic marks the difference between action and inaction on the
challenge. A challenge either finds a champion or gets buried. A challenge is
unaddressed doesn’t mean it dies. If a restaurant doesn’t respond to “home
delivery through mobile app” trend, it may suffer its consequences eventually. But
every tough challenge would need a person in a leadership position to champion
it. This means she would put her weight behind the challenge, put a few
resources together to study the issues and experimentation on the topic. A
challenge book should indicate who the challenge is championed by in case it
indeed has a champion. Number of challenges championed by people with senior
positions is one of the important health indicators of its innovation initiative.
In short, current-ness, prioritization and
championing are the three characteristics of a good challenge book. Hope this
helps you to improve your challenge book.
“Please listen to me” or “Please
let me complete” are common requests in our day-to-day conversations. It is not
uncommon to be in a meeting where you feel that the other person is just not
listening to you. In fact, you start wondering if anyone is listening to
anybody else. But don’t be surprised if the person on the other side is also
feeling the same way about you. All of us have an agenda and we are all focused
on driving that agenda. Is it possible that we are witnessing an empathy deficit
everywhere? I don’t know. But in this article I would like to present three
symptoms which I feel indicate an empathy deficit.
Urge to label: Whether it is
the drivers on the street or the teachers in the school or the colleagues at
work, we carry an urge to label them. We are convinced that they are doing
something obviously wrong or crazy. However, one thing gets lost once we label
someone or something – our ability to learn more about that something or
someone. Empathy is primarily about accessing
our own ignorance. And when we approach a situation from “I know it
already” perspective then it leaves little opportunity for us to access
ignorance. Thus urge to label indicates lack of empathy.
Urge to preach: Sometimes we take on a mission – say of
sustainability. And then everybody whom we come across as careless about
environment e.g. waste management becomes a candidate for preaching. We start
giving sermons on A-B-C of sustainable living. If I am lucky, the other person
listens to me. However, more often than not, these unwarranted sermons are
received with apathy and pain-in-the-neck reaction. And that is not surprising
because a sermon is being delivered without understanding the interest of the
listener. Thus urge to preach indicates lack of empathy.
Lack of listening: Listening is such a common experience. However, quality
of listening can be very different in different situations. Moment I hear
something I don’t agree with, a voice in the head gets triggered and it
generates so much noise that it is very hard to actually listen to the other
person. This is especially true when the topic is close to my heart – say my
religion or my favourite idea or even my car etc.
Urge to label or preach or lack of listening are
easier to observe in others. However, it is quite powerful if one can observe
it in oneself. This may be the beginning of accessing the illusion we have been
living under all the time. Why don’t you try and test?
Ocean-wave is an ancient metaphor used to explain the nature
of human existence especially in non-duality literature1. According
to this metaphor human life is as independent as a wave on the ocean. Ocean is
the invisible vastness and the waves are you, me, tree, table and every form
that arises and goes back to the ocean of vastness just like a wave does. Most
of us find it difficult to relate to this metaphor. In the past few years,
another phenomenon called dancing
droplets is creating ripples among two communities in physics: hydrodynamics
and quantum physics. In this article, we will explore if this dancing droplet
phenomenon does any better as a metaphor to communicate the non-dual nature of
existence.
First, let’s see a few reasons why we find it difficult to believe
the ocean-wave metaphor.
1.As I walk around the room, there is a distinct
sense that I am an independent entity called “Vinay” which is choosing to walk
around. Wave, on the other hand, is so tied to the ocean, it hardly seems to
have any independence.
2.I remember past events. E.g. I can remember how
I walked around in the house say from a sofa to the kitchen to the dining table
etc. If I wanted I could retrace the path as well. It doesn’t appear as though
wave carries any memory and I am not aware of any waves that can reverse their
paths (go backwards).
3.I am responding meaningfully (at least I am
trying to) to the situation all the time. For example, if the doorbell rings, I
go and open the door. This is going on all the time. It is not clear whether
wave derives any meaning out of the situation and responds to the situation
meaningfully.
In summary, lack of (1) independence (2) memory and (3) meaningful
response seem to differentiate “Vinay” from a wave. And that is why it is
difficult to believe that life is like a wave on the ocean. Perhaps there are
more differences. But for now let’s stick to these three. Now, let’s turn to dancing
droplet and see if it can do any better than ocean-wave metaphor.
To appreciate the dancing droplet metaphor, it would help to
watch this video titled "Is this what quantum mechanics looks like?". It uses jargon from physics. But don’t worry, we don’t need
the physics jargon to appreciate it as a metaphor.
In the video we can see that there is an oil bath which is
vibrated by a speaker. Using a toothpick, Derek Muller is generating droplets. Now,
these droplets don’t seem to recombine with the oil bath immediately and keep bouncing.
This happens because of a layer of air between the droplet and the oil surface
which doesn’t become small enough size for it to recombine. Here are a few facts
about this experiment that are of interest to us:
The droplets don’t seem to stand in one place
but seem to walk around (under certain conditions). And they can do that for a
long time, sometime for days. It is as though the droplets have a life of their
own
Every bounce of the droplet on the oil bath
creates a wave. Thus, the droplet gives form to the wave and hence the wave can
be called in-form-ation wave. And at any point of time, the resulting wave
after a bounce is a combination of all the waves created by the previous
bounces of the drop. Thus, the resulting wave contains the information of the
previous bounces. i.e. it has memory. Does it mean the droplet can retrace its
path? Yes. We can reverse the direction of the vibrating signal and the drop
retraces its seemingly random walk. It is similar to I retracing my walk from
the dining table to the kitchen to the sofa. Check out this video titled “Turing machine with wave
memory” for how the droplet retraces its path.
A droplet seems to walk around in a random
manner. However, on close examination, it becomes clear that the direction of the
bounce of the droplet is dependent on the slope of the wave where the bounce
happens. If the drop bounces on the upward slope, it bounces backwards and if
the bounce happens on the downward slope, it bounces forward. The drop seems to
be guided by the wave. In other words, the drop responds to the situation which
is determined by the shape of the wave at the bounce.
Note that the information field created by
the successive bounces of the drop is active. It pushes the drop around. This notion
is different from the situation when information is stored in memory but not active.
In fact, we can say that the meaning of a situation at any point of time for
the droplet is the activity of the information2. i.e. slope of the
wave is the meaning.
Now, let’s ask, does this droplet have an existence
independent of the oil bath?The answer
is “no”. A droplet’s “life” is determined by the information field which, in
turn, is created by the history of the bounces. However, if we magically make
the information wave invisible then it may create an illusion that the drop has
independent existence. Now, let’s see how this dancing droplet phenomenon
compares with human existence.
When we respond to a doorbell, we are responding to the
information field influenced by another person who pressed the bell, which in
turn, could be result of an online order I made on the click of a button earlier.
In fact, we can say that our daily activity is guided by the information field
around us. Emails, TV, WhatsApp, Internet, newspaper, people are contributing
to the vast information field and the field, in turn, is guiding us. This
information ocean remains largely invisible to us except for the ripples which
show up in the form of TV news, WhatsApp messages, cars passing by, doorbell
ringing etc.
Now, let’s look at the similarity of meaning as the activity
of information for the droplet and for us. Let’s consider our thought as a
system of conditioned and shared reflexes. If the doorbell situation appears
threatening to me then a set of reflexes are fired (say, of conversing across
the closed door to find more about the visitor). On the other hand, if it means
“not dangerous”, then another set of reflexes would be fired automatically to
open the door. Thus what appears to be a “choice” seems hidden in the programmatic
nature of the conditioned reflexes. Thus information field is constantly acting
through a set of reflexes, which in turn, is conditioned by experiences. In
short, each of us is bouncing and influencing the vast information ocean and
that information ocean, in turn, is guiding us.
Now imagine that the droplet becomes conscious – i.e. it gets
a sense of “I am”. Moreover, let’s imagine that the oil bath is largely
invisible to the drop. And it mistakes this awareness of “I am” with its own
boundary (a drop of 1mm radius). So it might “think” that it is independent and
making “choices” about where to go next depending upon the situation. We are
doing the same.
Notes:
1.Reference to ocean-wave metaphor is found in Ribhu Gita,
one of the ancient Hindu scriptures. Ribhu Gita was advocated by Ramana
Maharshi, a 20th century spiritual teacher from South India.
Reference to ocean-wave metaphor can also be found in “I am that” a compilation of
talks with Nisargadatta Maharaj, a 20th century spiritual teacher
from Mumbai.
2.If you want to read further on “Meaning is the
activity of information” I suggest the article: “Meaning
and information” by David Bohm.
