NASSCOM Design4India, India by Design Report 2019

India,

by Design Perspectives, Trends and Practices - 2019

2

India, by Design - Perspectives, Trends and Practices - 2019

3

4

Content Title

Page No.

Foreword

7

Methodology

9

Executive Summary Introduction

12 - 17 20 - 21

The four key themes: Change, by Design

22 - 39

Business, by Design

40 - 57

Local, by Design

58 - 69

Future, by Design

70 - 81

Recommendations

84 - 87

Conclusion

89

Acknowledgements

91

India, by Design - Perspectives, Trends and Practices - 2019

5

6

Foreword Design is no longer just about aesthetics, it is a strategic imperative for businesses and organizations to grow and succeed. In this era of digital transformation, design is used by businesses as a key differentiator to respond to changing trends and consumer behaviours. The outperformance of design-led global companies suggests that good design means good business. Fortune 500 companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Disney, IBM have demonstrated the intrinsic value of “design thinking� as a competitive advantage that impacts the bottom line and drives business growth. Businesses have come to recognize that design innovation happens at the intersection of desirability for customers, viability at the business level, and feasibility for technology.

Mirroring the global scenario, in India too organizations have slowly but surely realized the importance of design intelligence not only to create innovative products and solutions but also to enhance and improve customer experiences.

Gradually the skills, principles and practice of design are being used across a variety of industries, be it banking, retail, telecommunications, education, healthcare, hospitality, transport, automobiles, and others.

In this report, we have presented the key trends and themes shaping the current state of design in India, from the perspective of what’s changing in the practice, why it is becoming important for businesses today, and how organisations need to equip themselves for a future by design. The report captures practices adopted by leading organizations to drive design as a culture and delivering value by creating human-centered experiences.

We hope that this report will help organizations decipher the business value of incorporating design principles in their solutions and services and also guide them to embark on a design-led journey of fulfilment.

Debjani Ghosh President, NASSCOM

India, by Design - Perspectives, Trends and Practices - 2019

7

8

Methodology This report presents a window into the current state of design in India. It shines a light on the evolution of design in the country – the growing significance of design in the world of business, and a view at how organizations and design teams are equipping themselves for a future by design.

The information presented in this report is synthesized from three key sources of input: 1. Primary research interactions with 20+ leaders in the domain of design and business in the country 2. An online survey conducted with over 100 respondents actively engaged in the practice of design and design-led business thinking and operations 3. Secondary research to uncover global design and technology trends impacting India As a part of the primary research, deep-dive immersions have been held with a collection of design and business leaders, entrepreneurs, and design educators, working across a diverse set of companies, organizations, startups, and agencies and design schools in the country. Human-Centred Design research methods like the card sorting activity and research inquiry toolkits were specifically designed and employed to facilitate these interactions in an engaging manner.

The team has analyzed and synthesized in-depth conversations to arrive at the 4 key themes presented in this report. Each theme is supported by observations, insights, notable quotes, and case-studies from the primary research conducted.

Inputs from secondary research, present a view on global design and technology trends that are impacting India, and these have been used in context, to support the key findings and insights featured in this report. The “We Recommends’’ section at the conclusion of each of the four themes presents a collection of quick steps to empower organizations and individuals to embrace best design practices, irrespective of where they may be on the design maturity spectrum. These recommendations support examples that showcase how the most innovative companies in the world are leading the way in design.

India, by Design - Perspectives, Trends and Practices - 2019

9

“

10

“ Design is so simple, that’s why it is so complicated.”

- Paul Rand Thoughts on Design

India, India, by

by Design Design --Perspectives, Perspectives, Trends and Practices Practices -- 2019 2019

11

India, by Design

Executive Summary The past decade has been a momentous one for design and its growing significance in the world of business and technology today. The discipline of design is now recognized globally, as a key contributor to new value creation. In the experience-led economy of our times, often referred to as the age of the fourth industrial revolution, design plays a critical role in shaping and delivering business success. The rapid adoption of technology in the country, combined with the diversity and scale of the user base, makes design a critical competency for organisations today.

Based on our interactions with more than 20 leaders from a variety of industries representing various fields of design and business, and an online survey with 100+ design professionals, entrepreneurs, business practitioners and design students, this report presents a view on the current state of design in the country.

The report findings are listed under four key themes that traverse the journey of design in India:

Change, by Design Business, by Design Local, by Design Future, by Design These themes capture how design has changed over the years, why design matters more to business today than ever before, what the future of design means, and the significance of design in India in the global context.

12

Change,

by Design The 21st century has ushered a new era for design. Design has moved beyond its traditional areas of operation to a brand new paradigm of technological brilliance. Today design is no longer about creating an independent product or service, it is the totality of a multidimensional experience, delivered at scale.

des ign

desig n th ink ing

user exp er ie n

Design is driving forth a new era of innovation and change. Emerging technology, contemporary business models, and growing global access is facilitating an exciting decade of design disruption and enabling users to demand products/services at par with the best in the world.

ce

Design thinking and other design-led processes for innovation and differentiation are increasingly becoming commonplace in the corporate landscape today, as organizations are investing in design as a core capability.

Organizations, businesses and product companies are becoming aware of this shift in consumer mindsets and are beginning to see the value design can bring.

GOOD DESIGN

The growth in the demand for good design has transformed the perception of design as a practice.

The world today is hungry for design, and the market is ready for a new breed of designers to rise to the occasion and deliver.

more designers......

As design becomes popular and more ubiquitous, a few key recommendations that organisations looking to scale through design: Build a design team that is highly skilled, diverse and empowered.

Focus on ‘design doing’ as a critical component of the design thinking journey.

Leverage an empathy led approach to user research, to uncover new opportunities for customer delight.

Deliver a consistent customer experience,that is individually relatable at scale.

Focus on convenience as a key driver for choice making.

India, by Design - Perspectives, Trends and Practices - 2019

13

Business,

by Design In the past, the practise of design has focussed mainly on the aspect of creating desirability, however, in current times, good design exists at the intersection of customer delight, business viability, and technical feasibility. user

CDO CXO

Many organizations are employing designers at senior levels to drive the mandate of design and adopt a design-led approach to innovation within their organizations.

Design and Business businesses must + collaborate to Design deliver impactful user experiences.

Organizations are striving to excel by providing a differentiated customer experience through design.

Organizations are building internal design teams and design leaders to drive transformation in their organization through design. Here are a few recommendations for organizations looking to scale through design:

needs

Organizations pro are becoming duc t more aware that designers are well equipped to identify and understand the unserved needs of their customers in a unique manner. Design is creating a significant competitive advantage and value creation for organizations.

PwC’s 10th annual Global Consumer Insights Survey (GCIS) 2019 – gathers feedback from more than 21,000 online customers in 27 territories. This survey shows that in addition to the traditional RoI metric used to determine business success, there is now a need to focus on another metric, one that focuses on customer experience – a ‘Return on Experience’ (RoX). Whether an organization is in the business of household goods, health services, education, hospitality, automotive sales, or financial services, delivering a superior experience is the key ingredient to winning.

Designing for experience: To think beyond a traditional product and ROI mindset to a Return on Experience (ROX) view on value creation.

Measuring design outcomes clearly and tangibly to gauge their impact on business.

Sharing success stories to inspire and build belief and momentum.

14

Local,

by Design The proliferation of smartphones, ease of access to rich data at very nominal rates, and the large pool of technology users, makes this a exciting time of technological shifts in India.

According to a joint study by The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) and PwC, the number of smartphone users in India is expected to rise by 84% to 859 million by 2022 from 468 million in 2017. This exponential growth in the use of smartphones impacts customer engagement and the way designers build products/services.

Global corporations have begun to take note of this and are customizing their products to suit the Indian context.

Products are being designed to meet the changing aspirations of the Indian customer. Interestingly, India is becoming a piloting ground for several innovations that find application in similar countries around the world.

Apart from big global corporations, local startups have also been instrumental in creating new areas of demand for novel products/services.

Many of these startups are now expanding beyond India and showcasing design to a broader audience across the globe.

India is becoming a significant geography for global corporations, and a noteworthy hub for dynamic local innovation. Here are a few recommendations for organizations looking to scale through design: Design for inclusion. India is a country with a diverse set of customers, cutting across gender, age, literacy, language, religion, geography, and economic status lines. Designing for India means designing for all these users, in a manner that is sustainable, scalable, and delightful to all.

Design for trust. In a world of limitless access, rich data, and network effects, designing for privacy and trust have become critical pillars for good design.

Design for empowerment. The power of new technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), Drones, and Blockchain must be leveraged to empower the local community to transform their lives.

India, by Design - Perspectives, Trends and Practices - 2019

15

Future,

by Design India is today at the cusp of radical change. A new world is at our doorstep. Along with exponential access to and adoption of new technologies, the profile of the new tech user is changing the game.

On the one hand, people who have never worked on a computational device before, have leapfrogged technologies and are using the smartphone today with relative ease and delight.On the other hand, a new generation of digital natives – Generation Z (Gen Z – born 1995 onwards), is coming of age and driving a whole new set of consumption behaviors.

With new design practices and a new breed of designers entering the workforce, new technologies coming of age and becoming the new normal, and an informed people with the power of choice and platforms to make themselves count, India is poised for a future to be led by design.

Designing for sustainability rather than for obsolescence is capturing the collective mindset. In a significant shift from a consumerism driven mindset focussed primarily on accelerating and scaling consumption, design schools are now concentrating on designing for a circular economy.

A circular economy is an alternative to a traditional linear economy (make, use, dispose) in which we keep resources in use for as long as possible, extract the maximum value from them while in use, then recover and regenerate products and materials at the end of each service life.

As we head towards that future, Here are a few recommendations for organizations looking to scale through design: To design for humans in a complex new world of technology, data and machines, the ability to deliver with simplicity and coherence will be a critical strength to possess.

Design needs to support circularity by eliminating waste and pollution from the consumption cycle.

A new audience comes of age as Millenials and Gen Z begin to become key drivers of choice and influence. They will form a significant part of both sides of the economy – creators as well as consumers.

The ability to solve problems creatively, in hitherto unexplored ways, will become one of the most important leadership skills for the leader of the future, and that future begins today.

16

Conclusion As we look around us, design is everywhere, all-pervasive and deeply embedded in our lives. Good design is no longer “nice to have,�some fancy thing; it a basic core ingredient for business success and customer delight. In an age of technology, this celebrates the human in the tech. It empowers a new generation of innovators and changemakers to bring delightful experiences to a brave new world.

India, by Design - Perspectives, Trends and Practices - 2019

17

18

India,

by Design

India, by Design - Perspectives, Trends and Practices - 2019

19

Introduction Design is becoming ubiquitous as more organizations are adopting creativity at scale.

As the domains of technology, brand, products, and services converge into a unified customer experience cutting across the globe, the role of design has become a critical one. Design is creating a unique customer connect, one that can define success for organizations.

Design in Tech Report 2018 1 presents a telling insight into how traditional businesses in the US have begun to respond to the need of the hour – building their design muscle as a core capability:

2015: 14 creative firms were atypically acquired between 2004 and 2015 by tech companies like Facebook, Flextronics, Google, also Accenture, Capital One, BBVA, McKinsey & Co. As the marginal return on computing power (a la Moore’s law) diminishes and technology is less of a differentiating factor, the value of design has entered the foreground. 27 startups that were co-founded by designers were acquired since 2010 by companies like Intuit, Google, Facebook, Adobe, LinkedIn, and Yahoo.

2016: Design firm acquisitions continue: 42 design firms since 2004, and 50% of them in the last year alone. Accenture, Deloitte, IBM take the lead.

93.5% of 370 designers surveyed believe that coding and data-oriented skills are table stakes knowledge for designers in tech.

2017: Demand for designers is up with Facebook, Google, and Amazon collectively growing designer headcount by 65% in a year, according to LinkedIn. McKinsey & Co and Salesforce make significant bets on design with more acquisitions.

100% of the top 10 business schools have student-led design/innovation clubs.

1 Design in Tech Report 2018, John Maeda

20

The past decade and a half has seen design moving into the world of business and the lives of consumers at a relentless pace, from its point of origin in the Bay Area in California to the rest of the world. A new path for the practice of design was led by design consultancies like IDEO, Lunar (acquired by McKinsey & Co in 2015) and Frog Design, and the d.school at Stanford University, established in 2004, brought the formal practise of Design Thinking to the world of business at large.

Today design is as relevant to India as it is to the rest of the world, and of even greater significance, one may argue, given the rapid pace at which technology is being adopted in the country. The best that the world has to offer is now available in India at scale, and that user base is growing exponentially.

The number of smartphone users in India is expected to rise by 84% to 859 million by 2022 from 468 million in 2017, according to a joint study

by The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM) and PwC. This changes the traditional rules of business and creates new rules for engagement. As a part of this study, we spoke with design, and business leaders across multiple industries and organizations in India, multinational brands and domestic, of varying scale and reach, to understand the significance of design to their world of business and to India today.

Based on what we heard and saw, this report presents our findings under four key themes that best capture the essence of the current state of design in India.

Change, by Design Business, by Design

users as of to 468m in 2017

12.9% annual growth rate

2

Local, by Design Future, by Design These themes capture how design has changed over the years, why design matters more to business today than ever before, what the future of design means, and the significance of design in India in the global context.

Design Council UK most aptly articulates the significance of design today in its Design Economy 2018 reportÂł - Design and design skills are at the heart of the fourth industrial revolution.

2 An ASSOCHAM-PwC joint study.

3 Design Economy 2018, Design Council UK

India, by Design - Perspectives, Trends and Practices - 2019

21

Change,

by Design Stanford d.school founded. - by David M. Kelley

National Institute of Design

“The India Report�

- by Eames Charles and Ray Eames come to India

1957 22

The 21st century has ushered in multiple new dimensions to the practice of design. Historically design was about making things – tangible industrial products that were self-sufficient and complete in themselves. Today it has evolved beyond being this singular object changing the lives of a select few, to a dynamic connected entity changing the lives of billions, every minute, every second.

Today it is no longer just a product or a service; design is the totality of experience experienced by a consumer.

The key emerging trends are: 1. Decade of disruption 2. Design as a commodity 3. Full circle design

India, by Design - Perspectives, Trends and Practices - 2019

23

Change, by Design

1.Decade of Disruption.

Ever since the launch of the iPhone in 2007, everything changed. The iPhone defined for this era, the power of a well-designed experience. It brought to the fore, the ability of industrial design excellence and technological brilliance, combined with the unique needs of the 21st-century human, to create an unmatched user experience. One without precedent. A product differentiated by its totality of design. The iPhone changed the world of design and business.

“Over the past decade, the phone has changed the perception of design in a lot of ways for a number of companies - it has shone a spotlight on the importance of design to business.�

- Deepak Menon, Microsoft

Most people across the world, and increasingly in India, experience the power of design through the object in the palm of their hands - the ubiquitous smartphone, the doorway to the world of online services, entertainment, education and technology. A key to the connected world of the internet of things.

4 Kantar IMRB ICUBE report

24

According to a recent Kantar IMRB ICUBE report 4: The internet user base in India has exceeded 500 million mark and is likely to reach 627 million by end 2019.

Of this, 293 million active internet users reside in urban India, while there are 200 million active users in rural India. Not surprisingly, 97% of users access the internet on their mobile device.

Increased availability of bandwidth, cheap data plans and increased awareness driven by government programmes seem to have rapidly bridged the digital gap between urban and rural India. Consequently, the penetration in rural India has increased from 9% in 2015 to 25% in 2018.

Key Observations:

1. Technology democracy and the universal experience ‘Everything is digital today,’ is a statement that one simply can’t ignore. The power of our computing devices and the rate of technical advancements, has ushered in an age of relentless innovation and an ever-expanding user base. Different sets of audiences have access to the same set of digital tools. The scale and reach of the network is unlike ever before.

“We need to start everything with asking - How can users take advantage of tech in India today?.”

According to a recent report on Techcrunch.com: WhatsApp has amassed more than 400 million users in India, reaffirming its gigantic reach in its biggest market. This revelation comes more than two years after WhatsApp said it had hit 200 million users in India.

Rural

Urban 38 20

22

10

- Deepak Menon, Microsoft

“WiFi has become like electricity in your house... it’s everywhere.”

- Sameer Chavan, Flipkart

Higher usage in urban India but rising coverage in rural India.

Share of active WhatsApp users (% respondents)

2017

2018

Infographic from - Lokniti-CSDS Mood of the Nation (MOTN) Survey

India, by Design - Perspectives, Trends and Practices - 2019

25

Change, by Design _ Decade of Disruption

2. Best in class experiences across service offerings People today expect the best that the world has to offer, across product and service offerings.

This means that designers need to design in a far more universal and yet individually relevant manner. The design needs to feel meaningful to a diverse set of users at a similar level of consistency and at the same time, be designed for individual experience delight. The role of the designer has, therefore, become critical to delivering a differentiated customer experience today.

Our conversation with Nitin Sethi, at Indigo Airlines, revealed the efforts put in by the UX team to gather data from multiple sources of information to deliver the best possible travel experience to its customers. For example, members from the team spend at least one day a week at an Indigo call center to understand the pain points and grievances faced by its customers, and team members routinely fly across India to observe and learn, and then build something new to test and deliver.

“We are always pushing to deliver a consistent, reliable and trustworthy experience”

- Nitin Sethi, IndiGo Airlines

26

3. Designing beyond design The designer is no longer seen as a master of pixels, a prototype maker and manufacturing process guru alone, the designer is expected to be a strategic thinker with a head for business, and the best design practitioners are expected to demonstrate an equal balance of design thinking and design doing.

According to Lulu Raghavan, at Landor Associates, large Indian corporates like Tata, Mahindra, and Godrej have been actively leveraging design and design thinking in their respective businesses. In the US, the two companies that have led the way on this front and created significant impact for themselves, as a result, are P&G and Intuit.

“Design should be able to determine how to craft a product in a particular way” - Deepak Menon, Microsoft

“Focus on the craft with attention to visceral design. It’s the first impression that a user perceives even without using the product” - Sameer Chavan, Flipkart

4. Rise of Start-ups With the evolution of technology and its democracy, many startups have come up in India in the last few years. They have made the world sit up and take notice of the critical need for creating exceptional user experiences to establish a deep connection with their customers. Larger organizations are seeing the impact of these practices and have begun to transform their way of doing business to align with this spirit, and this, is changing the traditional business landscape in the country.

5. The ‘designer’ in everyone A host of products and services that were earlier dependent on a niche skill or an exclusive competency are now accessible to all. From online editors that have simplified the process of creating graphic illustrations to ‘phygital’ products that have made interior visualizations easier, tools have become templatized and accessible at scale. Some examples are: Canva, Squarespace, Wix.

“We’ve too much to do, too little money and too many problem statements, so we need to prioritise, you learn these things very soon as a start-up” - Arun Vinayak, Ather Energy

Initiatives like Jaaga Labs and NASSCOM’s - 10,000 Start-ups are providing space and resources to these sprouting entrepreneurs to establish their presence in the market today.

“We started in 2009 by providing the first co-working space in India, where niche communities like Activists, Technologists & Creatives got together. While people used the space for galleries, auditorium, events, etc. they had to explain the purpose of what they did.”

- Archana Prasad, Jaaga

India, by Design - Perspectives, Trends and Practices - 2019

27

Change, by Design _ Decade of Disruption

6. Technology has transformed the roles of traditional design and tech disciplines With the rise of User Experience (UX) as a core area for innovation and differentiation, the need of the hour is for designers and engineers to work together to deliver unique experiences.

They form a new breed of creators that are blurring the lines between design and technology to bring alive a new wave of user-centric tech products and services, in a rapid and iterative manner.

5

As per the Design in Tech Report 2018 – Since 2017, design tools have begun to evolve out of print and early web design paradigms from the Photoshop era to encompass prototyping, project management, version control, inline coding, and automation.

59%

of respondents voted “Voice/Chat interfaces� as the most contributing emerging technology for improving traditional user experience through design followed by Immersive technologies like AR/VR/MR.

Based on the responses received in the NASSCOM Design4India Survey.

59

Voice/Chat interfaces

Immersive tech (AR, VR, MR)

Artificial Intelligence

47

31

57

5 Design in Tech Report 2018

28

11

31

23

high

9

30

medium

low

Photo by Alex Knight on Unsplash

India, India, by

by Design Design --Perspectives, Perspectives, Trends and Practices Practices -- 2019 2019

29

2.Design as a commodity The introduction of design thinking and doing things the design way is an unstoppable wave, and continues to gather momentum and grow its audience every new day. It is therefore, a good time for the practice of design. The challenge however lies in delivering beyond the theory to outcomes that present an optimal mix of strategy, craft and technology to deliver consistent customer delight, translating to greater business success.

“Design is everything, everything is design” - Nitin Sethi, IndiGo Airlines

“Enough people know and understand the importance of design today, but designers are expensive, more than developers. So start-ups feel the need to have them, but can’t afford them at an initial stage” - Tej Pochiraju, Jaaga

30

des ign

desig n th ink ing

user exp er ie n

Change, by Design ce

“While design thinking tool box has helped a wider set of professionals to think and ideate like designers, it needs to be assessed if it’s being applied effectively. As Design Thinking is made into a process and set of tools, one could lose the essence of the holistic design approach. That has led Honeywell to move on to a new holistic process to move from idea to revenue. On the positive side, design is now an integral and natural part of innovation and development process” - Unmesh Kulkarni, Honeywell

In India, 100% of the organizations we spoke with knew about ‘Design Thinking’ in one way or another.

knowledge of design thinking

Key Observations:

1. For design thinking to succeed, the design doing needs to be strong too The excitement around design thinking has led to a widespread awareness of design and implementation of design thinking at many business schools and organizations. Which has helped spread the word on design and helped design leaders earn a seat at the business leaders’ table. On the other hand, it may have oversimplified the design process to a degree where many may be using it as a ‘shortcut’ to achieve magical results. The rigor of the process needs to be maintained and outcomes measured consistently through the journey, to leverage it to its maximum potential.

“Every step we measure, through all the key pillars of design thinking.”

- Nitin Sethi, IndiGo Airlines

“Design thinking is a recipe; the outcome depends on the people.”

Biju Damodharan from Amazon India says design thinking is integral, fundamental and at the forefront of innovation at the organization. It is at the heart and center of everything Amazon does. In India, it has contributed to transforming the way India buys and sells, like people in Ladakh buying on Amazon.

“Design is used for selling without being authentic to it. Many are doing this today because it is a shiny new thing.

The workshops are only a part of it and an entry point” - Sudhindra V, IBM

“Design thinking works best when the roles for all multi-disciplinary collaborators are defined - while it is useful for designers and engineers to know and understand each other’s craft, they need to play their respective roles” - Unmesh Kulkarni, Honeywell

- Alexander Grünsteidl, Global Logic & Method

India, by Design - Perspectives, Trends and Practices - 2019

31

Change, by Design _ Design as a commodity

2. Design craft and design strategy need to work together Design craft and design strategy cannot succeed as separate units, existing by themselves. They need to work in tandem to bring to the world the most desirable product/solution the customer will be delighted by and one that is viable enough for the business to love too.

Using both these lenses simultaneously creates a significant impact, where the outcome of strategy and craft is a unique, memorable, and profitable experience delivered.

“Good design is about understanding what is essential for customers, and what is vital for business.”

- Biju Damodharan, Amazon

“Research-backed identification of user needs, combined with clear thinking and good design, will lead to good business.

At Google, while developing our products, we make sure they are simple, address a core need, and are easy to use. They are extensively tested to ensure they can work in varied environments and serve the users across multiple scenarios ” - Mrinal Sharma, Google

3. Leading with people first To create a significant impact, deep customer empathy is a must. It is at the heart of the design thinking process. In today’s world of limitless choice, a product that answers the needs of its consumers better than the competition will be the one that rises above the noise. Always keeping the user at the core of the offer, is key to business success.

According to Deepak Menon at Microsoft, there was a time when people would work with a particular technology because it was the only option available then, there wasn’t much choice. Today, however, the world of opportunities means that solutions need to be uniquely crafted for the user, they need to fit into the world of the user and not the other way around.

“When we had resistance, we demonstrated it by our work and we proved the value of design through our customers” - Karthick Karnam, Inmobi

“My most unhappy customer is my best asset” - Nitin Sethi, IndiGo Airlines

“It’s true, focus on the user and all else will follow. There is a very very strong focus on crafting the ideal experience in our products.

If it doesn’t align to the capabilities and motivations of our target users, the product or business opportunity is of no use.”

- Mrinal Sharma, Google

32

des ign

desig n th ink ing

user exp er ie n

IDEO, one of the world’s leading design consultancies, and The Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, also known as the d.school at Stanford University, both founded

by David Kelly, have made popular and socialized at scale, the idea of Human Centred Design. The Human Centred Design approach is a people first approach to design, where designers and researchers leverage empathy as a key tool to bring the human at the heart and center of every design solution, for it to truly succeed with the greatest chance for adoption and engagement.

ce

human centered design toolkit

India, by Design - Perspectives, Trends and Practices - 2019

33

Change, by Design

3.Full circle design The evolving nature of the industry and businesses of the 21st century has tranformed the role of the designer. It has moved on from a single domain specialization vertical to more of a ‘T’ shaped role, which combines domain depth with the ability to stretch horizontally beyond their unique fields of specialization. Today however, the designer needs to move beyond the ‘T’ to becoming more of a full circle designer, connecting the dots between various aspects of solution design, across multiple areas of expertise, to deliver something truly remarkable.

A tool for a sustainable future

“New interaction paradigms means we need to design differently today” - Biju Damodharan, Amazon

Facilitator for internal and external innovation for companies

Research driven features/ services for business value Visual aesthetics

34

Stages of Design Maturity

Specialised Designer

T shaped Designer

Full-stack, (O shaped) Designer

Key Observations:

1. The new breed of designer needs to know a lot more than their predecessors The new breed of designers must equip themselves with a more advanced skill-set than their predecessors.Today’s designers need to be full stack/ circular designers with a deep area specialization in their craft and yet have the singular ability to drive projects from the start to end. They should demonstrate a keen knowledge for business and strategy, and move beyond their expertise in design.

“All fields are converging - visual, interaction, research, industrial design and it’s now a full-stack designer, the rise of Product Designer, which is beyond the T shaped designer.”

- Sameer Chavan, Flipkart

2. The designer as a businessman Designers today need to make themselves familiar with the business dimensions of solutions proposed. Today the principles of Human Centred Design have provided a new point of access for businesses to touch the lives of their customers and to empathise with their needs. In the process, the art of business has come much closer to design than it ever was, and in turn, the designer is now expected to have a sharper understanding of the nuances of business than ever before.

However, as expressed by the design leadership at Amazon India, looking for such design leaders, who straddle the world of design and the world of business with equal ease, is very difficult. There is not enough talent pool in this area, there is a problem of availability of the right people for this job.

“Personalities of designers have changed.

They understand complex problems and demonstrate a high level of confidence” - Unmesh Kulkarni, Honeywell

India, by Design - Perspectives, Trends and Practices - 2019

35

Change, by Design _ Full circle design

3. The rise of design as a profession Traditionally in India, creative fields such as design have seldom been looked upon as reliable career options, and have certainly not been the go-to career choice for parents, looking out for their children. This perception of the field is however, changing. Designers now have titles that sound and look more serious, and more chalked out career paths than ever before. This has encouraged parents to look at design as a serious career option for their children as it is a valid domain to build a career as a professional.

According to a report published by the British Council and the India Design Council in 2016, titled – The Future of Design Education in India 6: Design in India has matured over the years and is booming. By 2020, the potential market for design in India is expected to be INR 188.32 billion (GBP 1.43 billion). Only a fifth of the design market is currently tapped.

6 The Future of Design Education in India, British Council and India Design Council, 2016

36

From a handful in 2010, the number of design institutions has grown to over 70 by 2016.

Given the positive demographics, rising educational aspirations, openness to pursuing alternate careers, employment opportunities and increased affordability of higher education, the number of design aspirants is increasing every year. The number of designers required by 2020 in industrial, graphic, communication, packaging and other design domains will be 62,000, provided the design potential is fully realized. Currently there are approximately 7,000 qualified designers in the country and approximately 5,000 students in design education.

“Parents now look at design as a good way for their kids to be financially successful.”

- Mandar Kale, Strate School of Design, Bangalore

“I’ve had colleagues enquire about design schools and consider design as an option for their children, after looking at the work we do”

- Sudhindra V, IBM

Photo by Strate School of Design, Bangalore

Based on the responses received in the NASSCOM Design4India Survey.

First exposure to Design

39%

Design School

25% 3% 6%

10%

17%

Self taught through books / online courses

Art/ craft practitioners transitioned to design Design Thinking workshops Course at B-school Upskilling or training at workplace

India, Practices -- 2019 2019 India, by

by Design Design --Perspectives, Perspectives, Trends and Practices

37

Change, by Design

We Recommend People and Culture Build a design team. Make it flat.

Keep it versatile.

Talking about organizational structures, the idea of building flat teams for innovation have been in the limelight since 1996 with companies like Valve being one of the pioneers. See Valve’s Handbook for new employees, don’t miss to see their definition of a “Manager” in the glossary section).

In the context of hiring and building design teams, the trend is to have designers who have skills beyond design. Look for people who go beyond their deep design expertise, who can understand the business side of things better, bridge the gaps between design and technology teams.

Follow through design thinking with design doing.

Go beyond just attending and organizing ‘Design Thinking’ workshops for you and your team. Make ‘Design Thinking’ an integral part of your practice.

Step1: Educate and Sensitize. Use design thinking as a tool to increase buy-in for ‘designed’ systems across departments.

Step2: Create a space and time for frequent collaboration and sharing. Bring together multidisciplinary teams with defined roles.

Make this a part of your organization’s culture.

Step 3: Facilitate focussed work through these collaborations towards specific outcomes. Click here to know more about the Sprint methodology by Google Ventures (www.gv.com/sprint)

38

User Centricity Prioritize problems based on user research.

Understand first-hand experience of your users to derive strong and meaningful insights, support that with secondary research and relevant market surveys. When in a dilemma, always bring the users’ motivations and stressors to priority. The rest will follow.

Refer to Nitin Sethi’s case-study on how the IndiGo team empathizes with their customers on page 26.

Validate the assumptions about your users as early as possible.

Assumptions about your users like their know-how about your product/service, flows they might prefer, the time they would take for interactions should be validated early on.

See this to get a glimpse at what mobile UX testing team of Facebook have to share on some simple and effective methods that anybody irrespective of their background in design can do it.

Integrate seamless personalization along with a consistent experience.

Netflix is leading the way in demonstrating how seamless personalization through tactful recommendations has made its audiences binge watch, for hours. The algorithms feed what goes into a custom landing page based on the multiple preference groups that a user fits into. Click here to read more.

Leverage the channels convenient for users to stand out in the noise.

Bloomberg Quint in India sends specific articles based on messages sent by users through WhatsApp chatbot integration.

This initiative has claimed to earn 3.5 lakh subscriptions in a span of 8 months. Click here to read more.

BookMyShow and MakeMyTrip use WhatsApp, a medium shared by 400 million customers in India, making it convenient for users to access booking details without taking extra effort to reach their respective platforms.

India, India, by

by Design Design --Perspectives, Perspectives, Trends and Practices Practices -- 2019 2019

39

Business,

by Design The rise of the Chief Design Officer at the leadership table signals the importance of the role of design in business today. Designers are great at empathising with the needs of the consumer, leveraging the design process to uncover those hidden needs that when served well, can become a key competitive advantage for the organisation. The need of the hour is for design to bring together the worlds of the best user experience with a sustainable business model.

The key emerging trends are: 1. RoI to RoX (return on experience) 2. Design as a culture 3. Design moves beyond a ‘good to have’

40

Desirability

Viability

Feasibility

Around 2005, the design firm IDEO formalized a new discipline called ‘Business Design’. There were a few dozen Business Designers across the company. Their role was to balance the needs of users with the needs of the clients. In IDEO’s Venn diagram, innovative solutions hit the sweet spot where viability, desirability, and feasibility overlap. Business designers, to put it simply, had to design for viability, ensuring that the most desirable solutions were feasible as well.

India, by Design - Perspectives, Trends and Practices - 2019

41

Business, by Design

1.ROI to ROX (Return on Experience) “Return on Investment?” has been one of the most challenging questions to answer for most designers across various levels and industries, and continues to be so. However, a new perception has begun to take seed; organisations are beginning to look beyond the traditional ROI lens to a much broader one that has begun to recognise a Return on Experience (ROX) as a key contributor to revenue generation and valuable customer connect.

“There is always a competition between revenue and experience - at times experience gets affected due to revenue.”

- Gaurav Mathur, Myntra

7 Health Care Providers Can Use Design Thinking to Improve Patient Experiences, Harvard Business Review, 2017

42

According to a recent article published on Forbes.com, Return on Experience is the New ROX 7.

With the growing customer expectations, the new “Return on Investment” is now “Return on Experience.” With improvements in technologies, it is now simple to see and improve the value of customer interactions.

Return on Experience means having the right customer experience management strategy, it’s possible for companies to not only orchestrate and personalize the entire end-toend customer experience, but to do it moment to moment, at scale, on any channel, and in real-time. It means that companies need to concentrate more on what they are putting into their content than their ads themselves.

RoE beyond RoX When asked about the Impact of design in the context of “Return on Experience”, the top three areas that got the highest votes were: 1. Better quality of products/ services 2. Customer satisfaction/ loyalty/ recall 3. Effective collaboration between teams Interestingly, these areas overtook “Increasing revenue” (Return on Investment) as an area of direct impact.

high

64

Consumer satisfaction/ loyalty/ recall

58 29 32

0%

50 41

23

21

8

17

18 38

24 25%

5

21 55

Increase in revenue

Reducing cost

36

21

Reduced time to market

14 30

56

Effective collaboration between teams

Scalability

low

86

Better quality of products/ services

Adaptability

medium

53 50%

75 %

100%

Based on the responses received in the NASSCOM Design4India Survey.

India, by Design - Perspectives, Trends and Practices - 2019

43

Business, by Design _ RoI to RoX

Key Observations:

1. Better experience is better business

2. Keeping it simple in a complex world

Today, we find ourselves in an age of experience. great technology is not enough to sell. People are not looking for commodities or generic undifferentiated goods. They are looking for unique experiences, while at the same time in sync with their way of being, experiences that delight. We are in an age where every product and service provider is constantly trying to better the experience it provides. More often than not, these experiences go beyond the initial sale.

Be it food delivery, commute or online shopping experience, treating customers well, taking care of their comfort and allowing them to be human.

These are some of the little things that make customers love a brand and sets the foundation for long term customer loyalty.

Increasingly, design and design thinking is now being used to solve a lot more complex problems than a decade ago. Whether it is about designing better patient experiences, better healthcare and education systems or better follow through on highly rigorous industrial processes, design has to work a lot harder today to bringing simplicity to a highly complex world of interconnected parts.

“Customer experience is everything now.

It’s about what customers can achieve with your brand, not just buy from the brand.”

- Antony Parham, Fitch

In our conversation with Arun Vinayak, at Ather Energy, “Clean ownership experience” is one of their core philosophies. They look at the overall ownership experience in six phases : Buying, Riding, Parking, Charging, Service, and After life. The teams at Ather are set up to own and deliver on each of these experiences. The success of the monetization model is heavily dependent on the quality of execution and delivery across each of these phases.

44

Arun Vinayak, at Ather Energy, says that Our biggest strategic risk is if we don’t learn to use design to help us evolve faster…

Design is our moat. Design is our business advantage. How quickly can you design would answer how quickly can you stay ahead of others?!.

3. Data Powered Design A recent Harvard Business Review publication on the subject of the use of design thinking in the realm of patient experience8, mentions that this process has been one of the most promising approaches for understanding patients’ experiences in recent times. It calls for a creative, human-centered problemsolving approach that leverages empathy, collective idea generation, rapid prototyping, and continuous testing to tackle complex challenges. Unlike traditional approaches to problem solving, design thinkers take great efforts to understand patients and their experiences before coming up with solutions.

This thorough understanding of patients is what guides the rest of the process. And because design thinking involves continuously testing and refining ideas, feedback is sought early and often, especially from patients.

Along with business supporting design and vice versa, the other key element supporting design is data. Business value acceleration is driven by data. The pairing of a data scientist and a design researcher is a powerful combination, enabling an organisation to uncover unique unmet needs to design for, and capture disproportionate value from. Data powered design is the new path to deep customer connect and significant business success. Equally valuable to the traditional business player, as it is to the world of startups and entrepreneurs in a new economy.

In conversation with Gaurav Mathur from Myntra, he told us how their organisation and planning was highly technology and data driven, “We understand what is selling and we understand why? We stock accordingly, set trends accordingly, understand finances, etc. through various tools that integrate.”

“Even in the early stages of product conceptualization our storytelling decks are data and user insights-driven. The story provides an illustration of insights relating to our target users, their behaviors and key use-cases. This pitch acts as the central articulation of the opportunity for all stakeholders and the leadership.”

- Mrinal Sharma, Google

India, by Design - Perspectives, Trends and Practices - 2019

45

Business, by Design

2.Design as a culture For the practice of design to truly succeed, it needs to create and be nourished by a culture of empathy, inclusion, trust and the freedom to experiment and iterate to create the new.

A design culture is about bringing human centeredness and creative confidence to the heart of the business practice.

“When you hire peoplein an organisation, how do you develop culture? Because without culture you are nothing. You are just people who showed up.”

- Peyush Agarwal, Designit

“In our organization we embrace a culture of growth mindset which means a love of learning from our customers as well as our colleagues” - Deepak Menon, Microsoft

“We have flat structures and an open culture at Google. Innovation comes from everywhere and we need to foster an environment that facilitates this. At the heart of driving meaningful product strategy is a culture of mutual respect and listening to all points of view.”

- Mrinal Sharma, Google

46

In our conversation with Peyush Agarwal, at Designit, Bangalore.

He spoke about the four key questions to be answered as you form a design team: 1. How do you become a recognised brand that people want to work for?

2. How do you develop a culture and values that are beneficial to the people and the organisation ?

3. How do you develop capabilities within the team to know more and be a stronger team?

4. How do you build business?

Culture is directly proportional to the quality of work delivered. People and workplace dynamics play a role in defining the history, values and vision that are translated into the way people think and act. These pillars define the quality and type of work a creative pod generates. If you don’t get this collaboration right, then the growth of the team can be at stake. Design culture is deep rooted in transparency, sharing, empathy and ownership.

Key Observations:

1. Design success is leadership led Design practices are new additions to traditional organisations and startups today.

Getting the right lead design practitioners to set up a team that drives the same values is key to a successful design team within an organisation.

“Creative leadership is gardening, not architecture.” - Michael Hendrix, IDEO In a world where everyone is a proclaimed designer, it’s essential to look out for the ones practising their craft for over a decade. The flow of the practice seeps in from top down, so look out for leaders that are practitioners of their craft, when setting up a team.

“To evangelise design we need people who are design leaders... the ones who have demonstrated good craft, those who are good at Doing than just Talking” - Sameer Chavan, Flipkart

55% of the respondents voted “design doing and practising their craft” as the most impactful leadership quality for a design leader. 84% of the respondents felt that leadership quality of being “famous personality” doesn’t matter much.

Based on the responses received in the NASSCOM Design4India Survey.

Design doing and practicing their craft

55 59

Building the right culture and collaboration within the team Good understanding of business and market Mentoring and guiding

40 4

5457

43 3

49

49 1

36

57

84

Famous personality

high

India, by Design - Perspectives, Trends and Practices - 2019

7

medium

low

47

Business, by Design _ Design as a culture

2. Design vs. Businesses Many companies struggle to find designers.

They believe that there are not many designers in the industry today who are looking for a job in a typical corporate. A large part of the design community, in turn believes that traditional companies are not interested in hiring designers.

This conflict of belief emerges from two main factors i.e. businesses trying to find designers that ‘fit’ into their world, and designers not seeing certain companies as potential design centric entities. Better engagement between the two would lead to a far more complementary relationship for both.

Karthick Karnam from InMobi says, “Looking at the other end of the story, we need to have an understanding of what the designers wanting to join us expect. From their point of view, there is a lot of buzz around design impact in customer facing product companies, whereas enterprise companies are often associated with “boring” work. However, this perception has to change and people should see the impact of companies like Slack, Dropbox and Asana.”

“Most product companies in India deeply care and value the impact that design can create on their overall business. The challenge lies in hiring the right set of designers. While the design talent in India is constantly growing, there is a lack of handson-designers at senior positions.”

- Gaurav Mathur, Myntra

48

3. Design drives a culture of Empathy Designing for people is the primary function of design. Empathy sits at the heart of the design and design thinking process. Only by putting oneself in the shoes of the other can one truly get a sense of what the needs and challenges of the other are. An empathy led approach is important not only in the design of products or services, but also in the creation of winning employee experience within an organisation. It is a key ingredient for both – the external and the internal world of a business or an organisation.

“With the culture of growth mindset, we have embraced empathy for our customers and our colleagues”

- Deepak Menon, Microsoft

4. Talented team is a force multiplier A diverse and talented team from a multidisciplinary background ensures a mix of different experiences and thought processes to create truly unique and differentiated experiences. A good mix of talented designers and creative business strategists, working together, is a must have team structure to drive the mandate of design through an organisation and create maximum impact for its business.

“Everyone comes up with ideas in the team and not just the designers. Some of the best product ideas have come from my engineers.

Our product design is a very collaborative and iterative process where everyone in UX-PM-ENG-BUS is involved. Our engineers even moderate and attend in-home interviews with UX folks” - Mrinal Sharma, Google

In our conversation with Unmesh Kulkarni, at Honeywell User Experience (HUE), Bangalore, He spoke about the key needs of young designers: 1. Giving them the independence to build and demonstrate.

2. The right ‘studio set-up’ with space for displaying and communicating their work.

3. To make them present and lead conversations with important stakeholders 4. Constant sharing of work and inspiration from around the world.

Helps them build confidence, have clearer opinions and feel comfortable, transparent, empathetic and be highly efficient within their teams.

“You can’t create a process and then attach people to it, it has to be the other way around” - Peyush Agarwal, Designit

India, by Design - Perspectives, Trends and Practices - 2019

49

Business, by Design _ Design as a culture

5. Win, Fail, Learn “When everything goes right you’ve done something wrong” - Designit If empathy is the heart of the design engine, rapid iteration is its fuel. Design is experimental in nature, just like business. Driven by trends, intuition and logic, it is an informed leap of faith to create something new. To design is to innovate.

Trying and failing is an intrinsic part of the design process. Failing is important, and failures need to be seen not as isolated moments in themselves, but in the larger context of failing fast to succeed sooner, stronger and better. Designing is about building, testing and learning, a constant cycle of refinement that carries the solution forward to a state of design excellence.

“To build a culture of experimentation, Start with the bad ideas” - IDEO

“In design success and failure is not a binary thing, but a spectrum.”

- Sudhindra.V, IBM

“If we are 100% successful then we are not trying hard enough – we have to do 99 things to have the 100th one work.”

- Deepak Menon, Microsoft

“Failure has a very different definition at Google. We are happy to try 10 things and of those, eventually launch only 2. There’s greater weightage on building thoughtfully, and with a clear sense of its relevance for the user.”

- Mrinal Sharma, Google

50

6. Designers need to tell stories Communication is a core strength for a designer to create a buy in for her/his vision and proposals.

Identifying a problem and providing an optimal solution is the essence of design, something that a designer needs to be good at, but creating conviction for the same is a key strength too.

A good designer needs to be able to make people feel the passion and the emotion in the creation, get them to love it as much as they do themselves. Great design needs a great storyteller, without this the true value of a design may not be seen and felt to the extent that it should.

“The role of the designer is not just to get the details right but a lot more. We help the team visualize the opportunities way early in the process at the same time also influence lead stakeholders by presenting the product stories end-to-end. We partner with research and product managers to help establish core principles and a well-aligned product strategy always keeping the users’ interests first.”

- Mrinal Sharma, Google

Storyboards as a medium to communicate user/ product journey.

“Storytelling is key to communicate insights, problems or stakeholder journeys. When designers visualize these stories, it creates an inspiring and ameaningful backdrop for co-creation.�

- Unmesh Kulkarni, Honeywell

Photo by You X Ventures on Unsplash India, India, by

by Design Design --Perspectives, Perspectives, Trends and Practices Practices -- 2019 2019

51

Business, by Design

Business

Design

3.Design moves beyond a ‘good to have’ Design today is seen as a significant strategic muscle. While in the past the word design was seen as an embellishment, a non-essential nice to have. Today it is the secret sauce that makes the dish. It has become an integral part of the value creation and value delivery journey. The quality of design delivered has a direct and proportional impact on revenues earned.

“With Wipro + Designit, we can now go to the client and say we can now do it end-to-end... that gives it more power and meaning”

- Peyush Aggarwal, Designit

Business + Design

“Good design is good business” - Deepak Menon, Microsoft

Evidence shows that using design improves business performance. Businesses that undervalue the importance of design may be missing vital opportunities.8 Design can bring a range of commercial benefits if used systematically across your business. These benefits include: - increased sales of your products or services improved market position relative to your competitors - greater customer loyalty and fewer customer complaints - a stronger identity for your business the ability to create new products and services and open up new markets - reduced time to market for new products and services

8 www.infoentrepreneurs.org

52

Key Observations:

1. Design process as a business process

2. Quality design is quality business

Design thinking has proven to be relevant and applicable to many diverse businesses today. It is not only widening the scope of services but also weighing in on key business decisions. Today, most companies see the design thinking process as a ‘must have’.

As design gets increasingly digital, the magnitude of its business success has proven to be directly proportional to the quality of design delivered. A well designed solution is an experience that delights, and an engaging one – one that keeps the user coming back to it again and again. It delivers a consistent brand experience across all its touchpoints, digital and physical like Apple and Airbnb have done with their products and services.

Nitin Sethi at Indigo Airlines mentions that they use the design thinking process to not only uncover the unmet needs of its customers across a variety of touchpoints to create better traction, but for an optimal follow through on their offline functions too, like getting planes ready between journeys.

“Designers are closest to the customers and they have the power to impact the entire organization with their knowledge”

- Biju Damodharan, Amazon

“One of the biggest success for me, is the internal transformation through design” - Sudhindra.V, IBM

“We have an eye for detail as designers, 3 pixels here or there on a screen are noticeable”

- Archana Prasad, Jaaga

India, by Design - Perspectives, Trends and Practices - 2019

53

Business, by Design _ Design moves beyond a ‘good to have’

Business

3. Design needs business as much as business needs design Though design has begun to integrate more deeply into the world of business today, and the world of business has become more aware and accepting of the strategic role design can play in creating value. The two entities still need to come closer together, and current market forces will make it inevitable for either,not to do so.

Ever since the d.school at Stanford began the practice of integrating design thinking into the curricula of business students, the past decade has seen this movement spread across the globe to prominent business schools the world over.

As a result the world of design and the world of business have come closer than they ever were, and the immediate future will bring them even closer.

“Companies like ours have a huge responsibility. If we do good design, others will do good design” - Sudhindra V, IBM

“Design is highly valued at Myntra. Not just the leadership team but every employee ‘thinks design’ in their day-to-day work.”

- Gaurav Mathur, Myntra

54

Design

Business + Design

When asked about the key areas of investment for a design practice, the following emerged as the top 3:

39%

33%

13%

Building an in-house design team

Upskilling and Reskilling existing talent

Subscriptions for CX/UX/ Design tools and platform

Our respondents prioritise design-ops expenditure as follows:

78%

of the respondents voted ‘Softwares and digital tools’ having the highest priority in the budget allocation among other things.

high

78

Digital software

40

Stationery Digital hardware Material & tools Workspace

medium

37 21 35

2

16

54

19

Documentation tools

18 41

30

30

low

13 32 43 46

Based on the responses received in the NASSCOM Design4India Survey.

India, by Design - Perspectives, Trends and Practices - 2019

55

Business, by Design

We Recommend Create your own methods to assess Return on Experience.

There are multiple ways of measuring impact design is bringing to business, depending on the nature of business and the integration of design. This post on Invision illustrates how a combination of quantitative (A/B testing, data analytics,etc.) and qualitative methods (customer reviews, customer support emails, one-on-one interviews) can help you assess the impact of good experience.

To evaluate the effects of RoE on RoX, have a look at this study

by Forrester, commissioned by Adobe. They also created this interactive tool based on the study.

Deconstruct ‘delightful customer experience’ into actionable KPIs across the organisation.

Delivering delightful experiences should be a shared priority across departments. From your service design blueprint, map out KPIs that would enable everyone (even outside the design team) to contribute and realise the value of their contribution towards consistent customer experience.

- Use the journey map as a guide and enable your teams to take complete ownership of ensuring delight across the journey.

- Help employees in your organisation to establish a connect between how their work results in delivering consistent customer experience resulting in positive business impact. Have a look at how Ather develops this connect pivoted on “Clean Ownership Experience” on Page 44.

Bridge the gap between design and business.

While teaching design to a business audience is a known trend, teach business to design teams at the same scale. Have a look at the initiatives of Microsoft to bridge this gap.

56

Embed the culture of ‘Design’.

Collaborate through empathy Recognize and acknowledge the uniqueness of each individual, right from the junior-most member to the top leadership at the organisation.

Imbibe the culture of caring beyond work, sharing your learnings, embracing ambiguity and having a beginner’s attitude.

To form a strong foundation for an honest and creative team, let people make mistakes, learn and express without fear, feel psychologically safe at the same time. Want to know how Google and IDEO foster creativity by ensuring psychological safety?

Communicate through story-telling Explain your concepts in a language and medium that a multidisciplinary audience can understand. Refrain from using jargons.Try analogies that they can relate to. Make your junior/ senior, designer/developer or any relevant audience, a part of your story. See this video from Wired on how Talia Gershon from IBM Research explains Quantum Computing to different listeners, from a 5th grader to a professional.

Experiment without constraints Joe Gebbia, co-founder, Airbnb shares his insight on the culture of experimentation in an article published by First Round Capital, a VC firm.“If we have an idea for something, we now kind of build it into the culture of this idea - that it is okay to do something that doesn’t scale. You go be a pirate, venture into the world and get a little test nugget, and come back and tell us the story that you found.”

India, India, by

by Design Design --Perspectives, Perspectives, Trends and Practices Practices -- 2019 2019

57

Local,

by Design India is many worlds in one. It is possibly the only country in the world which has such a high degree of diversity cutting across multiple lines and levels – economic, behavioural, regional, language, religion, gender and more. Designing for India, therefore, means – designing for inclusion. It means bringing the best of global to the local. Interestingly, designing for local needs and users has produced solutions that have proven to be relevant and easily scalable to other parts of the world, outside of India too.

The key emerging trends are: 1. Design for one, build for many 2. Design for Inclusion 3. The best time for design in India

58

l G le a Sc

a ob

l

al Design Loc

In our conversation with Kishore Thota and Biju Damodharan, at Amazon India, we learnt about how they created locally and scaled globally with success. Amazon India designed and built a ‘Lite’ app for Indian users in tier 2 and 3 cities. This app is today being used in Brazil and Mexico as well. Amazon found that the needs and challenges of the users were similar to those in India.

“One needs a deep understanding of India to truly understand the needs of the customer here, for India is not made of one single customer set”

India, by Design - Perspectives, Trends and Practices - 2019

- Kishore Thota, Amazon India

59

Local, by Design

1.Design for one, build for many Culturally, Indian users share products and services with their family and friends. So very often, a design that might be intended for a single type of user, may be used by many eventually. Parents and children often use the same device to communicate, shop and entertain themselves. This presents a unique challenge. Designers must design personal experiences, and yet at the same time, one that caters to the needs of many.

“Anything that is happening in the world, a part of it is happening in India.”

- Sudhindra V, IBM

“If we can crack it in India, we can crack it anywhere” - Sameer Chavan, Flipkart

9 NN Group - mobile behavior India

60

Shared access to a phone is common in India.

Often, there are fewer smartphones than people in the household, and family members share the device at some points in the day.

Further, due to cultural differences in the notion of privacy, it is acceptable to borrow a friend or relative’s phone to browse through the picture gallery or to make a call. In these situations it becomes important to have a privacy-control feature that limits access to sensitive information such as text messages, contacts, or Facebook.9

Key Observations:

1. Design for India, design for the world India, because of its sheer scale and appetite for new technology, acts as a testing bed for solutions that can be replicated globally in other developing as well as developed economies.

Most of the challenges faced here are related to limited access to resources. Many companies have experienced that solving for these challenges here, provides them with a solution that can be leveraged in other parts of the world as well.

In conversation with Mrinal Sharma from Google, he mentioned that Google Pay (Tez) was developed first for the new Internet users in India and later scaled globally. “It first scaled in India and set a high customer experience benchmark for a simple yet delightful payments experience in NBU markets.”

Key factors that played a role while designing Google Pay (Tez): 1. Payments are not just payments but an interaction between two individuals or between an individual and a merchant. Communication style of the interface and the threaded conversation made transactions very easy to find - when a user last paid someone or what amount the payment to the merchant was. We wanted to reflect both that personalisation and comfort with conversational interfaces in (Google Pay)’s user experience.

2. The focus was to empower users with confidence while satisfying the key use-cases.

For example, we found people being scared of using payment apps as they had a fear of losing money if anything went wrong.

3. Brands that help with daily life and maintain a seamless experience, win user loyalty.

Offline features in YouTube Go and Google Maps are other such examples which were first designed for India and then scaled across the world “In India, Internet connectivity is often intermittent, and it’s quality wavers while travelling around the city. Due to low connectivity, consuming pre-downloaded content is often more convenient for users. So we designed features keeping that in mind but this also scaled really well to countries like the USA where these issues didn’t exist.The key use-case here was….Oh, I’m taking a flight, I will not have connectivity, and I want to watch a movie or listen to music, so let me offline it.”

“As designers, it’s our priority to ensure the experience of the product is right. If it does not resonate with the users or drives adoption it does not meet the objective.”

India, by Design - Perspectives, Trends and Practices - 2019

61

Local, by Design

2.Design for Inclusion ‘Design for inclusion’ is the movement of the moment in the design world. It refers to the practice of deeply personalising for one, with the flexibility of design, to scale to many. Designing for inclusion in the context of India means, designing with an acute awareness of barriers of language, poverty, culture and trust, to create meaningful experiences for distinctive needs.

“International brands localise, local brands hyper-localise.”

- Antony Parham, Fitch

While Indian consumers may have leapfrogged technologies to become one of the fastestgrowing user bases for internet usage and adoption of smartphones, they still prefer their digital experiences to take into account their local context, traditions and customs.

“Most geographies like India used to be excluded. In the last 10 years we have become leaders in tech inclusion. We have recognised the exclusion, learnt from and applied globally.”

- Deepak Menon, Microsoft

62

According to Arun Vinayak at Ather Energy, design can help localise global trends and frameworks. He says, all frameworks are culture sensitive and cannot be dragged and dropped from one place to the other.

For example, DFSS (Design for Six Sigma) a Japanese framework cannot be dragged and dropped into an Indian start-up as it is.

Key Observations:

1. Design for Trust, Desirability and Convenience.

“Trust is earned, not machine learned” - IDEO To design for India, a few key considerations need to be kept in mind: Is the design trustworthy? Is it desirable? Is it helpful?

Will it be engaging?

The answers to these questions are the challenges and opportunities that help designers push beyond the obvious to deliver solutions that truly matter to this diverse audience.

“India is more dynamic and exciting than any place in the world... frankly!”

- Peyush Agarwal, Designit

“The world is at a low threshold of delight, Indians are happy with small changes”

According to Deepak Menon at Microsoft, trust will play a significant role in the practice of design in the next few years. Trust will become extremely important in the space where digital and design converge. And design will be invaluable in building the language of trust.

“It takes time to deepen your intuition of Indian users. We are bilingual by default, have diverse socio-cultural-spiritual norms with varied levels of digital confidence and literacy. Also, the ecosystem in India is changing so quickly with data becoming cheap, local startups rising, payments going digital, ride sharing and online video consumption growing day by day. You can’t just take a single trip to India and understand the motivations and expectations of Indians completely.”

- Mrinal Sharma, Google

- Sudhindra.V, IBM

India, by Design - Perspectives, Trends and Practices - 2019

63

Local, by Design _ Design for Inclusion

2. Designing for the Indian Sub Conscious

3. Designing for Indian Colloquialisms

When designing a technological interface, it is essential to understand users’ cultural coding and conditioning. People from two different cultures might likely interact and engage with the same interface differently, owing to biases.

To cater to the digitally empowered masses in India, technology and AI must become more suited to Indian dialects and language.

It is therefore critical for designers in India to understand the Indian cultural sub-conscious and the rules of engagement that it indicates when designing for the technology of tomorrow.

There are some usage patterns/pathways/ algorithms that might bias users against the interface itself.

“While we look at that, it is imperative that we also look at HMI (Human Machine Interface) or how would humans connect to these machines and as a result a design or design thinking element is necessary to understand whether algorithms produce bias for human beings” - Jagdish Mirta, Tech Mahindra

“India presents a crucible with unique constraints and opportunities which are a great testing ground for new products, and eventually provides a great springboard to launch globally. A host of products such as Google Pay (Tez), Google Go, Files Go etc. have gone through a similar design process.”

-Mrinal Sharma, Google

64

The task ahead is to borrow learnings from Indian linguistic systems to create local language operating systems that not only understand what consumers are saying but also what they mean.

Thus, hyper-localizing the language that technology speaks to ensure that consumers enjoy increased utility rather than just access.

“The majority of the population use one of India’s 22 main languages. The population is untouched by technology and its manifestations in English; Alexa and Siri would have a hard time here.”

- Jagdish Mirta, Tech Mahindra

Mismatch, by Kat Holmes www.mismatch.design India, India, by

by Design Design --Perspectives, Perspectives, Trends and Practices Practices -- 2019 2019

65

Local, by Design

3.A time for Design With the boom in the tech, digital products and services, and an exponentially expanding consumer base, the demand for better designed products is on the rise in India. The need for designers is growing in every field of the industry today. Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) are poised to enter the mainstream, as are Blockchain, the next generation of Chatbots and Voice Assistants driven by voice-enabled AI. All of these technologies will be differentiated by the experience they deliver. This is the best time for design in India, a time when design can create impact at scale.

66

“I want others to copy us - we should set the trend of design in India” - Sameer Chavan, Flipkart

“Design is enjoying a resurgence globally and specially in India, this is the best time for designers to create an impact” - Peyush Agarwal, Designit

Current challenges faced by design practices in India

01 Design

Awareness & Upskilling within non-design fields

05

Hiring & creating an enviornment for design specialist

02

Demonstrating good quality design work

06

Contextual design for India

04

03 Global

Design education integrated from primary to higher education

exposure & collaborations

07

Government support with laws & policies

08

New Technology integration & upskilling

Based on the responses received in the NASSCOM Design4India Survey.

India, by Design - Perspectives, Trends and Practices - 2019

67

Local, by Design

We Recommend Build an “Inclusion” strategy in the broadest possible sense.

India is moving towards designing for ergonomics, disabilities and diversity. Organisations are adopting Inclusive Design at scale.

While designing, certain biases can crop up and create blind spots that result in the complete or partial exclusion of a broad category of people - an ignored set of potential users. Here’s a checklist to avoid these biases and help you build a robust inclusion strategy: Gender : Is your product/service designed for gender diversity?

Literacy & Education : Can people with low literacy still use your product/service with ease?

Language : Is your product/service restricted to a category of people with certain specific language skills?

Cultural Factors : Are there any assumptions being made while designing the product/service that limits its use to a particular segment of society/category of people?

Geographical and situational factors : Can people from all geographies seamlessly use your product/service?

Tech literacy : Is your product/service equally usable to all spectrums of users ranging from the tech-savvy to techchallenged?

However, this list is not intended to be exhaustive but a good starting point of key considerations while designing for inclusion.

To dig deeper, click here for Microsoft’s toolkits and cards on inclusive design.

68

Solve for India, scale globally Designing for India means creating for multiple user types in one group. So while designing for India, keep in mind a universal design approach that solves for the extreme users too. Developing these solutions can also fulfil similar global needs elsewhere. As an example, see how Google did this with Tez.

India, India, by

by Design Design --Perspectives, Perspectives, Trends and Practices Practices -- 2019 2019

69

Future,

by Design “To design a better future, embrace the uncomfortable. So much of being a designer is being willing to embrace the uncomfortable.

We create new products, experiences and systems for people whose needs are different than ours—sometimes really different.”

- IDEO

70

The diversity of India and the evolving needs of its people means that design has a significant role to play here. That journey has only just begun. We need to design today for the needs of tomorrow. As mobility increases, the Internet of Things (IoT) gathers momentum, and hyper-localization becomes the norm, the demand on the designer to design with an eye on the future is going to be a key skill to have.

The key emerging trends are: 1. Designing for tomorrow 2. Design democracy 3. Transformation by design

India, by Design - Perspectives, Trends and Practices - 2019

71

Future, by Design

1.Designing for tomorrow “What matters tomorrow, is designed today” - Designit To design for the future, designers today must have a keen pulse on technology developments, directions and trends, and an intuition for what’s next. This will be a critical strength for any business to lead by design.

“You can’t adapt to change just because everything is changing, but understanding why it is happening and to evolve with it is important.”

- Thomas Dal, Strate School of Design

“Our approach has always been to first build products and offerings that have deep relevance and value to our users, collaborators and the ecosystem at large.

Only once this basic principle is in place can meaningful opportunities to monetize naturally emerge.”

In our conversation with Arun Vinayak at Ather Energy, we learnt that user research has its limitations, even though it is disrupting a heavily competitive space and creating a unique user experience. This limitation arises in scenarios when the constraints of currently existing products and technologies influence user needs and beliefs.

While developing their electric scooter, the teams at Ather Energy, had to rethink the functioning and processes of the present-day automotive industry.

“We tried user research, but people cannot envision how they would react to something that’s not even out in the market. During our interviews, they said that they expected a scooter to have a range of 40 kms in a single charge. These expectations were based on the range and performance of existing electric bikes in the market. But, we are coming up with 75 kms and meeting their expectations.”

Today, the bike has created a community that stands for the brand due to its overall clean ownership experience. “Any product/ service that does not exist in the market yet needs educative design”.

- Biju Damodharan, Amazon

“We want to transform the way India buys and sells and in turn transform lives” - Biju Damodharan, Amazon

72

Key Observation:

1. Design for the new tech native For the incoming new generation, digital is the norm. This is a generation that is living with a profound affinity for technology and instant access to a connected world of limitless information. We stand today on the brink of a technological revolution that is changing the way we live, work and interact with one another.

People have begun to refer to this period as the Fourth Industrial Revolution.As we look around us, its scale, scope, and complexity, is unlike anything humankind has experienced before.

Design will need to play a critical role in retaining the human in this world of the future.

“As the millennials grow up, it’s important to readjust our lens on youth and turn to the youthful generation that follows : Gen-Z. Aged between 16-24 today, they are predicted to overtake the millennials in strength by the end of 2019.” - Plum Insights, Indian Post Millennial Generation : A primer 10

Apart from vocal and text conversations, Generation Z children in cities such as Delhi, Bengaluru and Mumbai (together constituting 45 per cent of such children) access the internet via their phones or smartphones to update status on Facebook, tweet and stream videos. On an average, they spend about 40 minutes every day on these activities, say the 11 findings.

Designed to appeal to the millennial and Gen Z learners, the new breed of learning solutions, products and services facilitate hands-on skills and simplify complex concepts like robotics, coding and prototyping.

“Teaching Gen Z is all about being more joyful and engaging. Play and learn is the only way to reach them.”

- Thomas Dal, Strate School of Design

10 www.plum-insights.com 11 N N Group _ mobile-behavior-india Photo by Strate School of Design, Bangalore

India, by Design - Perspectives, Trends and Practices - 2019

73

Future, by Design

2.Design democracy Key Observations: Universal access to the best experiences in the world, and the ability for the individual to create impact at scale, is ushering in an era of design democracy. Good design is now known and felt by many, and people have begun to understand its value to create experiences that stand out, experiences that stick.

“We’ve now started helping some organisations by setting up their design teams here in India, thus helping them scale” - Sudhindra V, IBM

1. AI is the new team member Many e-commerce and digital product companies, have invested in automating certain repetitive design tasks through AI, to reduce risk and maintain brand experience consistency at scale.

This enables companies to keep their designers focused on doing what they do best – bringing the human to the heart of the design.

“We have created AI tools to make our UI design constant through the website and app.”

- a leading e-commerce company

“Our scale is an advantage for us. How do you set up design practices for success?

Culture of design, innovation in design, design operations, AI for design thinking, etc We’re reimagining our clients world and bringing it to life” - Sudhindra V, IBM

74

2. Design schools and design leaders for the future Given the needs of the changing times, the need for designers is also on the rise.

However, design schools, the incubators for these young design minds, need to shape their curricula with an eye to the future. The designer for the future needs to be armed and ready to quickly adapt and rapidly deliver to new sets of needs, in a radically different tech- enabled world.

Business

Design

The future of design education needs to focus on design doing and business acumen.

“We need leaders of their craft, people who can manage design and business effortlessly.�

- Deepak Menon, Microsoft

India, by Design - Perspectives, Trends and Practices - 2019

75

Future, by Design

3.Transformation by design Designing for tomorrow through an everchanging present is what all businesses invested in the future need to constinually keep driving towards. A better and brighter future for the country awaits, when the power of design uplifts its people and makes it a better world for us all to live in.

“Sometimes, when you’re focussed on a domain you tend to see a few gaps in the experience. Designers have a knack of seeing these gaps earlier than others.

The design team often researches and validates such hunches. It then proposes improvements and new features to fill these gaps.�

- Gaurav Mathur, Myntra

Design Council UK in its Design Economy 2018 report 12 on what good design does: Good design puts people first. It uses creativity to solve problems, challenge thinking and make lives better. Designers operate across the whole economy. They shape the built environment, the digital world and the products and services we use, creating better places, better products, better processes and better performance.

12 Design Council UK - Design Economy 2018

76

Key Observation:

1. Design for change The true power of design lies in transforming lives. Design today has the access, support, belief and tools to play a critical role in designing for some of the key needs of our nation today i.e. education, healthcare, employment, information access, transportation, safety, gender equality, alleviating poverty, etc. Active initiatives to solve for problems in these areas, by using creative strategies to design for social impact, will elevate the value of design in the country.

“As a designer, one always looks at problems around, but does one do anything about it is the question? We need to build communities to solve problems… pick up an issue, and do something about it... drive change by design… take up philanthropy by doing design... big studios and corporates need to create these moments and platforms” - Unmesh Kulkarni, Honeywell

The government of India in its recognition for the value of design as a change agent, put together a design policy to support and accelerate the transformation of India by design. Recognizing the increasing importance of design in economic, industrial and societal development and in improving the quality of products and services, the Government of India adopted the National Design Policy13 in 2007, through broad consultations with all stakeholders involved. The vision behind initiating the “National Design Policy” was to have a “design enabled Indian industry” which could impact both the national economy and the quality of life in a positive manner. A push for design to change the country.

“In tech, at most times we look at mundane things that only make economic sense, we should solve the bigger problems of society and empower individuals and organizations to achieve more.”

- Deepak Menon, Microsoft

“The future of design is headed towards social and environmental impact. People want to share and give back”

- Archana Prasad, Jaaga

13 National Design Policy 2007

India, by Design - Perspectives, Trends and Practices - 2019

77

Future, by Design _ Transformation by design

When respondents were asked, what they would want to solve for in India, the following themes emerged in the order of priority.

01 Education for employability 02 Better standard of living 03 Tech literacy and adoption

2. Consumers, the decision makers of tomorrow The trend of “Sharing” is evolving beyond just sharing of tangible resources, modes of mobility and living or working spaces. The emergence of blockchain, tamper-proof electronic ledgers and smart contracts have materialized this concept into reality. Mutual trust, peer to peer support and decentralization are growing more relevant empowering the users as absolute decision-makers of tomorrow.

04 Sustainable living 05 Urban Planning and Infrastructure 06 Rural Development 07 Indian Attitudes and Culture 08 Governance and Policy Support Based on the responses received in the NASSCOM Design4India Survey.

14 www.forbes.com

78

It’s been called a number of things: The sharing economy, or “shareconomy.” Peer-to-peer economy. Collaborative consumption. What all of these terms have in common is the idea of decentralization — and blockchain applications, including bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, are just the latest in a trend toward this new economic paradigm.14

Photo by Timon Studler on Unsplash India, India, by

by Design Design --Perspectives, Perspectives, Trends and Practices Practices -- 2019 2019

79

Future, by Design

We Recommend Retain Humanness. Build Trust.

With the dependence on technology getting stronger by the day, the number of non-human interactions we encounter is also increasing. While designing for these new scenarios, building and retaining trust becomes a challenge. Here are some action points to address these challenges: Prioritise Transparency : Make users feel more in control as they interact with the product/service. Enable them to make informed decisions through timely and effective communication.

For instance, if data is collected, have provisions for giving clarity by communicating the reasons, the need for it and the impact of it on the user. Here’s an article by Designit speaking about transparency in the context of designing for AI. Maintain consistency in your communication at all levels Establish Visual Consistency : Maintaining a consistent visual language across your channels can help build trust.

Apply UX principles to your textual content too : Keep the tone and messaging consistent. Have a conversational tone even for the smallest of the interactions like error messages, notifications and so on.

Disclose the right amount of information : Disclosing too little information or disclosing too much information can have a negative impact on establishing trust. This holds true not only for your products/services but your brand experience as a whole.

Have a look at this video where Joe Gebbia from Airbnb explains how they design for the right amount of disclosure.

80

Get to know millennials and Gen Z. But, don’t fixate.

Although the expectations of what Gen Z want from a customer experience might be slightly similar to millennials, certain nuances that are to be kept in mind while crafting experiences for them.

Here’s a great juxtaposition put together by Salesforce.

However, it’s important to keep in mind, that fixating your products/ services on just one set of users might make life difficult for others from the general population.

Plan a sustainable future for your product/ service/ organization.

The key features of circular thinking include modularity in design to promote re-manufacturability, upgradability, repairability, reusability, and a shift from ownership of goods to subscription of a service. Generating waste is considered as a design flaw. Explore the The Circular Design Guide : A collaboration between IDEO and The Ellen MacArthur Foundation. Within that, have a look at this interventions worksheet Their interventions worksheet helps identify circular opportunities in your product/service/organization.

Actively work on your creative problem solving instincts.

We notice a lot of everyday problems in and around our lives and routines. Rather than letting a problem go unaddressed, take up the initiative to actively work on solving the problem.

There are many inspiring examples of impactful changes across the globe, brought about by dynamic individuals and their creative approach to solving complex problems. An inspiring story of Tom Kelley & John Keefe, can be found in the book “Creative Confidence” by the Kelley brothers. (Page 106, “The do something mindset”).

India, India, by

by Design Design --Perspectives, Perspectives, Trends and Practices Practices -- 2019 2019

81

Photo by KidStock, Getty Images/ Blend Images

82

“ Belief in your creative capacity lies at the heart of innovation.�

- David Kelley

Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All

India, India, by

by Design Design --Perspectives, Perspectives, Trends and Practices Practices -- 2019 2019

83

India, by Design

Recommendations

Over the past decade, the Government of India has supported the practice of design and innovation to transform the country. In 2007, the Government of India put forth the National Design Policy to promote design in India through a well-defined and managed regulatory, promotional and institutional framework.

As a part of this policy, there was a special focus on the up-gradation of existing design institutes and faculty resources to international standards.

In particular, the National Institute of Design (NID) and its new campuses/centres were upgraded to spread quality education in various streams of design across the country. As a result of this initiative, two additional NIDs were established to spread design education. Another key outcome

from this policy was the establishment of the India Design Council (IDC) in 2009. The principal mandate for this Council was to create awareness and promote the value of design in the public and private sector, support the establishment of design and best design practises across the country, and position India as a top design destination in the world.

The Council established the India Design Mark in 2012 to recognize good design, provide a trustworthy platform of global repute and award design excellence in the country.

At a recent design conference titled ‘The Creative Spark’, Mr. Amitabh Kant, CEO of NITI Ayog (National Institution for Transforming India), said “Design and innovation are the next big thing (for the country)”. He further highlighted that India, with top-class entrepreneurship, digital technology and a vast market, will become a land of design and innovation, and a storehouse of data. Adding that the real value lies in design and innovation, Mr. Kant stressed that there is no reason to believe why Indians – armed with creative minds combined with top-class entrepreneurship – could not lead the world in the coming days.

84

To support this vision, NITI Ayog, as a part of its AIM (Atal Innovation Mission) has initiated a plan called Atal Community Innovation Centre (ACIC).

This plan will launch design and innovation centres across select Tier 2 and Tier 3 towns in India to encourage students and researchers to ideate and design solutions.

India, by Design - Perspectives, Trends and Practices - 2019

85

India, by Design

Recommendations There is a great foundation and demonstrable intent to grow the practice of design and innovation in India.

Here are some key considerations this report highlights, to maximise the true potential of design in the country:

01

Design education must begin early in a student’s life, to nourish and ignite the innovation mindset at a young age. An excellent example of such an initiative is the Atal Tinkering Lab programme initiated

by NITI Ayog as a part of the AIM initiative.

The programme aims to embed the value of innovation, technology and entrepreneurship amongst children as young as 12 years old and catalyse growth.

02

Design education must be continuously updated to stay relevant to the current times. Traditional design education was modelled around the needs of the industrial revolution with the core focus being on driving greater consumerism, obsolescence and commerce. Design education was therefore structured in a manner to create and deliver a super specialised breed of designers, capable of delivering these outcomes. The designer today, however, has to function in a far more complex world. Designing for sustainability, trust, equality, commerce and humanity, in an increasingly data-fuelled and artificially intelligent world, is need of the hour. Design education, therefore, must equip a new breed of designers to solve complex problems in the new world.

86

03

To fuel the vision of the India Design Council and position India as a top design destination in the world, academic institutions, public and private sector entities must work together to promote, deliver and socialise the best design practices.

04

Government agencies must incorporate design at an early stage, especially when shaping important policies on sustainability, climate change, equality, inclusivity, social justice, biodiversity, urban sustainability and other such critically relevant themes. The Government of India should appoint a Chief Design Officer, responsible for driving the mandate of transformation by design.

For example, in 2018, the City of Los Angeles created a position for a Chief Design Officer, to bring a unified design vision to projects that are shaping Los Angeles’ urban landscape.

The role involved collaborating with city officials, departments, and architects on a wide range of public projects, from housing to transit. Apart from Los Angles, other regions like Helsinki, Finland, Edmonton, Canada recently appointed Chief Design Officers to encourage local governments to reimagine their cities, leading with design.

05

The value of good design needs to be felt by the population of the country - design should be visceral and all-pervasive. People must feel the difference design makes in their everyday lives. Only then will the practice of design gain the mandate it deserves. The public and private sectors must work together to make the practice of design tangible, create a pathway for a better state of being, and a gateway to a brighter future for the country.

In conclusion, in the words of Amitabh Kant shared at The Creative Spark conference – “There cannot be a Make in India without Design and Innovation in India. The real value lies in Design; it is the crux of what we do and that is what all advanced countries are doing in the world. My message to students is - disrupt India in a manner in which it has never seen before…”

India, by Design - Perspectives, Trends and Practices - 2019

87

88

Conclusion The future of design in India is going to be a significant one as the adoption of mobile technology will explode, enabling more people to access the internet.

Access to technologies like Voice-Enabled AI and Chatbots (in vernacular languages), AR & VR, Blockchain, Drones, IoT, Cloud Computing and cheap access to wired and wireless broadband data, is setting the stage for a data-rich, multi-touchpoint digital economy. The application of these technologies, whether in the B2B or B2C space, will need a deep understanding of the user context and user needs. In such a world, the role of design will become even more critical and omnipresent than it is today.

Indians are consuming more mobile data than the US and China combined. Rural India is now propelling digital adoption, and figures show that rural India has registered 35% growth in internet users over the past year alone. Conversational AI running on voice-enabled devices like smartphones and smart speakers, is seeing a rise in uptake in the country, with Amazon Echo and Google Home leading the way. In 2017, Google launched its voice assistant, Google Assistant, on Reliance Jio’s JioPhone, a low-end smart feature phone.

While the mobile phone has come to define the digital experience for billions of new consumers, new frontiers for personal technology are now opening up.

Startups that are working with machine learning (ML) and voice-enabled AI are looking to make “post-mobile� experiences a reality for their customers in India and globally. Technology is being designed to become more personal than ever before.

Design is branching out of its core disciplines to embrace new areas of application and operate at new magnitudes of scale. We must begin to measure the impact of the design industry on the economy of the nation with more rigour, to understand the scale of its impact. In the UK, for example, the Design Council regularly produces reports that measure the contribution of the design economy to the gross value (GVA) added to the country.

Design is everywhere, all-pervasive and deeply embedded in our lives. Good design is now a critical human need. The world of the traditional designer is not what it used to be a decade and a half ago. The nature of design education needs to change too, and equip the next generation of designers for a brave new exponential world.

India, by Design - Perspectives, Trends and Practices - 2019

89

90

Acknowledgements This report is the result of many insightful conversations with individuals and teams who have shared their success stories and learnings, so openly and generously with us. A big thank you to all of you, we are truly grateful for your time and invaluable contributions. The content in this report is shaped by your knowledge and built upon your experience, and the journeys of many fellow travellers in the galaxy of design. We are also very grateful to everyone who participated in the survey that has added a valuable layer of data inputs to this report. We are delighted to share these learnings with you dear reader, and the larger audience interested in experiencing the birth of a new era of design in India.

Thank you all for your time, passion and commitment!

Biju Damodharan Sr. Manager, UX Design & Research, Amazon

Tej Pochiraju Principal, Jagaa

Kishore Thota Director, Customer experience and Marketing, Amazon

Lulu Raghavan Managing Director, Landor

Arun Vinayak Chief Product Officer & Founding Partner, Ather Energy Peyush Agarwal Managing Director, Designit Antony Parham Creative Director, Fitch

Deepak Menon Partner Director, Microsoft Gaurav Mathur VP User Experience Design, Myntra Sudhir Singh Dungarpur Partner & Leader, Digital & Experience Consulting, PwC India

Sameer Chavan Sr. Director & Design Head, Flipkart

Prateek Sinha Partner, Experience Consulting, PwC India

Alexander GrĂźnsteidl Global Head of Design Practice, Global Logic & Method

Tarun Rawat Executive Creative Director, Experience Consulting, PwC India

Mrinal Sharma Senior Product Designer, Google

Mandar Kale Head of Product Design, Strate School of Design

Unmesh Kulkarni Director, Honeywell User Experience Sudhindra V Chief Design Officer, IBM

Thomas Dal Director & Dean, Strate School of Design

Nitin Sethi Vice President Digital, IndiGo Airlines

Jagdish Mitra Chief Strategy Officer & Head of Growth, Tech Mahindra

Karthick Murari Karnam Head of User Experience, Inmobi

Ramesh Kozhissery Director of Design, Walmart Labs

Archana Prasad Principal, Jagaa

India, by Design - Perspectives, Trends and Practices - 2019

91

92

Disclaimer

The information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. NASSCOM, PwCPL and their contractors, subcontractors, advisors and service providers (and in case of PwCPL, other PwC Firms) disclaim all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information.

NASSCOM, PwCPL and their contractors, subcontractors, advisors and service providers (and in case of PwCPL, other PwC Firms) shall have no liability for errors, omissions or inadequacies in the information contained herein, or for interpretations thereof. The material or information is not intended to be relied upon as the sole basis for any decision which may affect any business. This report has been prepared for general guidance on matters of interest only, and does not constitute professional advice. Before making any decision or taking any action pursuant to the report, the recipient of this report should consult a qualified professional adviser.

Use or reference of companies/ third parties in the report is merely for the purpose of exemplifying the trends in the industry and that no bias is intended towards any company/ third party. This report does not purport to represent the views of the companies/ third parties mentioned in the report. Reference herein to any specific commercial product, process or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favouring by NASSCOM, PwCPL or any agency thereof or their contractors, subcontractors, advisors or service providers (and in case of PwCPL, other PwC Firms). This report does not reflect the views held by NASSCOM, PwCPL, any contractors, subcontractors, advisors or service providers thereof (or, in case of PwCPL, other PwC Firms).

The material in this report is copyrighted. No part of this report can be reproduced either on paper or electronic media without permission in writing from NASSCOM and PwCPL. Request for permission to reproduce any part of the report should be sent to NASSCOM and PwCPL. This report (and any extract from it) may not be copied, paraphrased, reproduced, or distributed in any manner or form, whether by photocopying, electronically, by internet, within another document or otherwise, without the prior written permission of NASSCOM and PwCPL. Further, any quotation, citation, or attribution of this report, or any extract from it, is strictly prohibited without NASSCOM’s and PwCPL’s prior written permission.

Forwarding/copy/using this report or any part hereof in publications without approval from NASSCOM and PwCPL will be considered as an infringement of intellectual property rights.

This report is not intended to be used by anyone other than NASSCOM. PwCPL has prepared this report solely for NASSCOM’s use and benefit in accordance with and for the purpose set out in PwCPL’s contract dated 6 Aug 2019 with NASSCOM. In doing so, PwCPL has acted exclusively for NASSCOM and has considered no one else’s interests. PwCPL accepts no responsibility, duty or liability: (a) to anyone other than NASSCOM in connection with this report; (b) to NASSCOM for the consequences of using or relying on it for a purpose other than that referred to above. PwCPL make no representation concerning the appropriateness of this report for anyone other than NASSCOM. No party other than NASSCOM is entitled to rely on this report for any reason whatsoever.

The above disclaimers apply (a) to the maximum extent permitted by law and, without limitation, to liability arising in negligence or under statute; and (b) even if PwCPL consents to anyone other than NASSCOM receiving or using this report. In connection with this report, no liability is assumed by any other PwC Firm.

“PwCPL” refers to PricewaterhouseCoopers Private Limited, a limited liability company in India.

“PwC Firm” refers to any entity or partnership within the worldwide network of PricewaterhouseCoopers firms and entities, each of which is a separate and independent legal entity. Please see www.pwc.com/ structure for further details.

India, by Design - Perspectives, Trends and Practices - 2019

93

Design4India is an open platform that enables the design and technology ecosystem to come together and drive design adoption at scale. Launched by NASSCOM in 2016, Design4India focuses on building design capability and capacity into the IT workforce by catalysing the entire ecosystem of design practitioners, academia, industry and government from the ground up.

Design4India is focussed on nurturing innovation and accelerating the next phase of design disruption in India.

Visit us at www.design4india.in If you would like to discuss the “State of Design in India� Report and how to stay ahead of the curve, please get in touch at: team@design4india.in #D4I #IndiabyDesign #StateofDesignInIndia Design4India, WeWork, Cinnabar Hills, Embassy Golf Links Business Park, Challaghatta, Bengaluru, Karnataka 560071 Phone no: +91 8147700609 Email: Info@design4india.in

/Design4india.in design4india

@Design4India Design4India

@Design4India_ design4india

Report prepared & designed by PwC India - Experience Consulting.

At PwC Experience Consulting, design thinking and design doing come alive to achieve extraordinary outcomes. It is where a diverse team of clientfocussed business and experience strategists, designers, industrial engineers and technologists work together to deliver amazing new experiences for customers and employees. A global community of makers working across physical, digital and everything in between, to create tomorrow, today.

Visit us at PwC Digital Services

94

Authors PwC Experience & Design: Aakash Dewan Khyati Seth Khyati Shukla Prateek Sinha Tarun Rawat Vimalesh R Mallya PwC Engagement Partner: Sudhir Singh Dungarpur

NASSCOM Design4India: Rhea Thomas Shalini Chandnani Theertha Muralidhar Vinayak Bhandare NASSCOM Research: Achyuta Ghosh Nirmala Balakrishnan

India, by Design - Perspectives, Trends and Practices - 2019

95

96