Business Design or: How I learned to stop assuming and listened to the customer
The last six weeks of business design fundamentals passed by very fast. At times, I felt like the protagonist of lord of the rings- Bilbo Baggins. As this course started, I was a novice, untrained, and coming in with my own specific biases about business design. After a week into the course, I met my fellowship — the service design team, where each member came with their own strengths and perspective. We zoomed, bonded, argued at times but most importantly stuck to our mission. But midway through the course, I felt lost and confounded like a dissatisfied customer in a customer journey. Like Bilbo, I grumbled and longed for my home ( old ways of doing things ), but I never turned back. We were endlessly looping through data analysis- insights-problem framing and HMW question. In this journey, I encountered my customer Anxious Annie and tried to understand why she was not using the self-checkout at the Shopper’s drug mart. Eventually, through trials and tribulations, we came up with one solution for all her needs and wants — one solution to rule them all.
Yet in the end, I realized that coming up with a solution was just a beginning, there were “miles to go before we sleep”. We need to test our solution, get feedback from customers, and reiterate to implement it in the real world. Not only that, this was just one aspect — service design- of this journey. There are other stages to learn and inculcate as well.
1. Trust the process
The process is the most important part of the business design analysis.I loved the way how initial classes focussed on the basics, such as design a vase, observational research, point of view madlib, need finding, etc. After doing kitchen-based observational research and ethnography, now I have started to see myriad things around me in a new light, segregate them into facts and observations. and I am slowly developing that sense of an ethnographer albeit through Twitter.
2. Learn it in a group
During this class, I was constantly reminded that working in a group can get great results. It throws all the preconceived notions, conscious and unconscious biases out of the window. During week 2, I realized after using the innomapper tool, that my innovative capacity was daytripper, which was kind of true to my ‘Bilbo Baggins’ personality. I tend to focus more on the usefulness and practical benefits of innovation rather than adopting it on its coolness factor. Being an engineer, I got schooled in design thinking from customers' perspectives and then rethinking and then rethinking some more. Finding the root cause of why elderlies (our customers) are not using self-checkout. It was a revelation for me ( an engineer) to come up with a problem statement from the customer perspective and not the usual way where we develop the product and then go on looking for customers. My groupmates always made sure that I was not jumping ahead to the solution part and asking why till we get the core of customer thinking. It reminded me of this quote :
“Think of the creative process as starting with a question not an answer”, Tim Brown, CEO, Ideo
Left to myself, I would have come up with a solution ( which I doodled even before the whole process) and then would have woven a story all around it.
3. A tip of the iceberg
Looking back at these bygone six weeks, I am now more comfortable with business design aspects and the unique value adds it provides to the business. The real-life examples ranging from Lego and Intuit to the problem statement for Instagram were enough to seal the deal. The business design actually works and has the ability to provide organizations with a competitive advantage. In my last job, I attended a two-day workshop on business design and wrongly assumed this is it. ( and ignorantly added business design on my LinkedIn profile). But now even after six weeks, I realize that we have just scraped the tip of the iceberg. I just learned about the one aspect of service design, there were other tools such as customer experience, business model etc. I believe this is the end of a beginning. Another Lord of the rings adventure with the another fellowship.
In conclusion, as the saying goes “it takes a village to raise a child”, I learned from amazing classmates, their ideas, perspective, and solutions. The final week was a perfect culmination of this journey, seeing all teams coming together, showcasing their solutions and slides. The quality and perspective were simply amazing. Now the Bilbo Baggins is looking for adventures beyond middle earth aka the course. I will be doing a summer internship at a technology consulting firm, and it is very important for a consultant to define the right problem ( initiate & investigate stage) and design the right solution (integrate & implement stage). For me, it is a perfect fit, with my quantitative engineering background, and then with human-centric qualitative aspects of business design, I am at the perfect confluence to have a vantage view of both sides and then come up with a perfect solution.
