On Clarity
There's a particular frame of time I'm sure you have experienced. You have a big presentation later today, or you're travelling for a week, and suddenly you have a mental clarity that's often missing from…
Category: The known unknown
The Questions We Don’t Ask: How Problem Framing Determines Solution Quality
I often wonder about how we frame problems (challenges, as I prefer to call them), and more importantly, how that single decision can ripple out for decades, sometimes centuries. Back in the 1950s, the consumer…
Customer is KingDesign ThinkingDTEverydayHuman BehaviourImproveInnovateLife or something like itThe known unknown
When Did We Stop Designing for Humans?
In the past year, customer experience has taken a real nosedive. Big brand products and services making baffling choices. Let's start with recent Panasonic/Google TVs. With any TV including the good old ones, adjust the…
The Return to Innocence
A lot of people go from lighthearted when young to bitter and caustic or indifferent as they get older. They might remain adequately friendly and cheerful in public, knowing well not to cross boundaries or…
Gimme Your Best Question!
A few days ago, I shared how one re-framed question unlocked a breakthrough solution for a pediatric hospital project, and opened up a contest for you to share YOUR transformational questions. I've been thinking about…
The Timing Paradox: Why Rating Your Driver Is Harder Than It Seems, and when 5 Stars isn’t quite Honest
After an Uber or Ola ride, the app asks you to rate your driver. Simple enough. But when should that prompt appear? Ask too soon, and users hesitate. Some worry the driver might instantly receive…
A Coupon Code for my Potato Book
My "potato book" was feeling left out with all the posts and coupons for the two design thinking books. So here's a coupon for Main Batata Hoon, a collection of short stories written in a…
Design ThinkingHuman BehaviourImproveInspireLife or something like itNot So SeriousThe known unknown
On Writing..
One of my favourite fictional characters is Poirot. In the 2023 film A Haunting in Venice, when explaining his method, he says: “When a crime has been committed, I can, by application of order and…
Instagram – Are People Reeling in their Posts?
Not sure if this is a more common pattern, but it has been my observation at least with regard to a bunch of friends who are active on Instagram that they have considerably reduced posts,…
Part 5: The Final Reflection (for now) on 12 Years as a Freelance Innovation and Strategy Consultant
Part 4 was about how we should proactively try to improve or disrupt where necessary, the inefficient parts of the sector or space we work in. And now, arguably the most valuable lesson I was…
Part 4: A bit about my journey for Young Change-makers
Part 4 of a series of posts aimed at young professionals. The world is getting increasingly confusing. Here are some of my learnings. In the last post (here), I mentioned the need for taking bold/…
Building Trust
There are brilliant behavioural science wizards across the world unfortunately employed with companies that have them busy finding behavioural science tactics to quickly build trust among customers. And maybe it works sometimes. To my knowledge…
Echoes of Doubt – Information and Trust in Maharashtra Legislative Assembly Elections
Our present realities can get very grey with information overload, misinformation, and fake news. Which is why this news from last week was so interesting. In the recent Maharashtra Legislative Assembly elections, supporters and politicians…
Learning
After graduating, or post-graduating (if that’s a term), most of us approach learning as a sort of inconvenience that must be suffered or ensured. Either as something your employer mandates to qualify for a promotion,…
What if You Ignored Analytics for a Second?
Analytics are now woven into our online social lives. We are constantly checking follower counts, likes, comments, and shares. A few years ago, I was right there with everyone, obsessing over metrics from Twitter, to…