Ep 195 |Design thinking Lessons from Apple, Tesla, Amazon, IDEO

Many of you might not know how design thinking has really changed and influenced the way in which the world is looking at. And because of only few companies and few brands and few products which has really made that influence and impact. Can I tell you? Apple iPhone, MacBook which is Apple product, Tesla's electric car, Amazon's shopping experience and one of the most amazing studio which is Ideo Design Studio which got the top 10 innovative studios in the world. These people design product which has really disrupted this entire particularly Ideos shopping cart. This is a world class product which every shopping complex has that product. So what are the principle behind this brand product and the success in this podcast? I'm going to give you the secrets what they did and how design thinking has really influenced them. So it's a very very important podcast. Take a lot of notes, let's jump in to shape our perspective and tune into a new frequency being a designer. Ok? Welcome to Design for Change. Thank you for staying tuning in with me guys, I'm working on a mission to help 1 million people get a creative design job even without a design degree or no experience. Guys, I'm helping them and this particular podcast is doing that and across globe 31 countries listeners are tuning into this podcast in Apple and Spotify and you are also one of them. If you'd like to get lot of episodes like this, please subscribe that and hit for further notifications and also invite your friends and your other creative designers or people who wanted to become a designers, please bring them up because in my podcast I address all the people how they can really go into a creative mode of their life. And you know what? Today what we're going to discuss is one of the very very important thing. How the successful industries like Apple, Tesla, Amazon, id, all these people have really broken the code and they're disrupting the product. Okay? So first things first. Design thinking is a human centered approach, okay? That integrates a lot of things like let's say people needs first, okay? Human centered I would say technology possibilities and the business requirement inter circling these things. And when you're able to apply a process of understanding the user, defining the problem, ideating, prototyping, testing and iterating, that becomes a whole definition of user design thinking. Okay? See this terminology was framed by Tim Brown, David Kelly and ideo and this is predominantly and prevalently used particularly I'm just recording the last few podcasts in order to go deep and make people really clear on how you can implement this. Because this is one of the successful principles which has Worked in product design industry, digital product design industry, service industries, system industries, even system design thinking. Lot of change in innovations and disruptions have happened. Okay, so to give you the case studies, let me give you a very, very classical case studies. I would say first, Apple. Okay, See, we know, we all know Steve Jobs, what he did for the iPhone. But there are a lot, many things which Steve Jobs. Steve. Steve Jobs has really did. I don't know how many of you really know about the history of Macintosh. How many of you know about the history of the mouse which we are using it as a user interface like, I mean, it has become a what you call body now. Same like our hands and legs. No, without mouse, you really cannot use a laptop or desktop or whatever. So very, very simple thing. As if you go to the core element. The only experience, what the mouse gives you is it acts as a basic interface element of a complex machine, which is called laptop. To that level of simplicity has been brought by a company, Apple. And Steve Jobs was a big visionary picking out this idea from that. So he has applied this divergent methodology and then he has asked his behavioral laboratory lab to work on it, to create it as a beautiful user interface, which was did by Donald Norman. You can read a book called Design of Everyday Things. It's a amazing book. Okay, so what really happened? They focused on simplicity, they focused on elegance. They focused on user experience, guys. See, these user experience terminologies was not very, very prevalent at that time. But Jobs was really missionary. Steve Jobs was really missionary into this. And that's why this is how they have done it. See, always Steve Jobs says, design is not what it looks like or feels like. Design is how it works. So people needs to feel that, right? Hey, wow. I made the transaction in a minute. Hey, I just shopped this product in a minute. If you are able to say this, if your user is able to say this, then you are giving a seamless experience, guys. Apple understands the user empathy to the core level. And they go beyond empathy. They create a vision for the people. I would say BMW and Apple doesn't do research in the market. They do research for the future. I've been into the BMW design museum, guys, in Munich, Germany. Wonderful place to visit. You know that that office itself will be in the shape of an engine, Ramjet engine, which was in the 1945 BMW built that, you know, aircraft engine. So I went into the BMW museum, I went into Apple Museum as well in Czech Republic, Prague. I went. So I've seen both of their core design principles and Products they, they envision the future, they fix the puzzle of the future in order to create the vision for them. So empathy to the next level. And they apply first principle method. See instead of building on existing design I would say they broke that principles fundamentals and they made a very, very touch based interface and intuitive cases. That's why the mouse came in and they follow the iterative approach. So numerous prototypes and refinements have happened even in the presentation of iPhone. If you can able to see the 2007 video, okay, go to YouTube. It's one of the most most watched YouTube video. Okay. You'll see Steve Jobs switching between two, three iPhones. Okay. It will happen in the background. Obviously the camera will not show you. But if you see there'll be a lag in his phone taking time because that one prototype didn't work well. He was taking the other prototype as a backup and it was working. Yeah, it means that everything is iterated. It's not a we only read in the design thinking methodology. It's iterated. But we never know some of the best products in the world. You know user iPhone has a maximum user satisfaction index in the world. You know why? It's because of these three simple principles. Empathy first principle thinking iterating design. I hope Apple case study would have given you a clarity. We'll go to Tesla now. Okay. See Elon Musk is another big example. In fact I would say Elon Musk is building three billion dollar industries, guys. Steve Jobs has only built one. So this guy is even going beyond crazy and like everybody's one hand laughing at him. But he keeps on breaking records. Definitely he'll go to mass for sure. The way in which he's thinking about how the humanity can be what you call humanity can be transported into another planet. So they don't just think only on building another ideas. The product design idea. What they have is like they think of manufacturing, they think of user experience. You know what? They have really broken the code of not building this entire vehicle on the normal chases. They wanted to build a new chassis for an electric vehicle. And particularly they also followed a great empathetic method and they delivered a high performance vehicles. Have you seen Tesla Model S, Model E, Model X, Model Y. So it's like huge guys. You know if you take Tesla's all four models it will come sexy S, E X Y. So I mean E was actually a model in Ford. So they named it as a different thing. Like they wanted to keep it in a different way. So it's like Amazing people have really created what you call beautiful products and service. Understanding this kind of a thing and particularly Elon Musk was a great guy who understands fundamentals. When he has rejected from what he called launching his own rocket into the space. He faced a lot of problem with NASA for the cost. Then he broke down the element of what it takes to building a rocket. And he built an industry called SpaceX and now he's making billion dollars with that. So instead of following this traditional norms he built everything from the scratch. That is one example. An electric vehicle design is the second example. And including the battery technology in the powertrain efficiency made particular Tesla model as unique in the world. And you know what? The model is underwent continuous improvement based on the user feedback technology improvement. Autopilot mode over air update. That was one of the unique feature nobody has ever given guys. So Tesla has did that. Let's come to Ideo now. It's a beautiful. I would say that's the best design studio in in the world where somebody would really need to work off. Okay. There are. There are other studios as well. But I really inspire them. They are the most top 10 global design and consulting firm and it's known for human centric approach. I told you David Kelly and Tim Brown these people have already formed this word and they also apply empathy in the next level particularly. I told you about the shopping cart design, right. They understood the user instead of taking the existing card changing. They really thought how a kid can be put. They really thought how the modular design can be bought. Really thought how it can be electronized so that if you put it put the product it will automatically start building. They really thought the possibilities of of how this cart could be used in a multiple and a versatile way so that it's good for the big shopping markets, small shopping markets, medium every player so and they iterated it. You know how much prototypes they have made. I'll paste you the link in this podcast description. Guys, you can watch that YouTube video of Ideos case Studio on the cart design. If you are a product designer, it's a must must watch at least 3, 4 times you need to watch that video. Okay. So this is the real world examples I'm giving you. And let me take you. Let me give you the key takeaways. Guys. It's about empathy. It's about questioning the norms. It's about iterating and improving. This is the exact point I would say. See, it's not about will not follow the design thinking. Yeah, you don't have to Follow but understand the principles, what went behind the success and incorporate them. That's the takeaway from this particular information what I've given. See. In fact, if you read a book called Change by Design Tim Brown it would typically cover design thinking framework focus on the human needs and behaviors. How do you solve a problem creatively. He talks about iterative process a lot. He talks about failure, failure, fail fast, fail fast. In fact, he would encourage design leaders to fail fast, take risk and embrace that ambiguity in their organization. And that's a great book. I would highly recommend. And I also put the name of that resource. You can buy it from online or bookstore or wherever. Okay. And you can prototype, you can test it. System thinking. He talks about cross disciplinary cooperation, collaboration and having this cultural transformation. So people don't get this. They are very rigid in terms of clients manage that it doesn't work. Design thinking is unique approach. And particularly these industries have really squeezed out the best what you call disruptive products in the world. That's why we are talking this. It's been almost, how do you call it? 15 years since iPhone release. We are talking about it. It's been almost 25 years since the Macintosh release. We're talking about. It's been more than 25 years. Mouse has been redesigned and interfaced in a different way. Talking about it, even the cart design, it's like 20 years old. So how do you really go into that level of zoom by understanding this principle? Because this podcast one time, if you hear guys, you'll not get a much clarity. So listen it one more time. Talk to people when you do the next time. Research with this mindset and attitude. Understand their pain areas. Apply first and third and try to iterate your prototypes and ask questions continuously in order to find out what best can come out of this situation. Have you seen the Colgate toothbrush design of Ideo? You know, their sales significantly improved, guys. They won the best design award for the most innovative and user centric approach. You can watch that. In fact, the smartphone were very complex before iPhone design and all. And after that only one button smartphone came. It's more simple. So they conducted huge testing and research. Guys. It's like in spite of that difficulty is you know what? Happiness cracked that code by understanding this intuitive, easy to use. So it's because of that reason they have really made a thing Amazon Jeff Bezos. You know what he that's the one company I would say guys, which is focusing on user centric approach. I mean user centered experience. I would say mind blowing. You Know what, if you check out, if you go for their online process like one click shopping option, they have, they have a frictionless commerce, communication, commerce between the traders and they have a separate dashboard for their affiliate product promoters. They have a separate dashboard for their warehouse, they have a separate login and portal for users. So they manage different things very seamlessly so that your delivery gets in one or two days. So I mean if you, if you have a prime subscription, you get it on the same day. So it's very complex to manage that kind of what do you call B2B and B2C work. So how do they do it? It's all because of understanding their user very deeply. It's not only we are users, even the Amazon affiliate promoters or the product sellers are also the users for them. So they take care of all. So they empathize the idea, they prototype, they test again and again. That's why they were able to click. They were able to create a prototype on the website and an app which is like superb. They most likely do this A B split testing and understand different user groups and create a good data to understand it. So I hope this podcast would have given you clarity on why design thinking is very, very vital. Go and apply this, you will get understanding and you will in fact create more products and disrupt than any of these industries. Okay, thank you so much for this podcast. If you need my support to learn and apply the design thinking in a more detailed way. If you want to really crack the code in 90 days, how you can get a good job without having any degree, without having any experience, starting from fresher, I would highly recommend to join my mentorship program. Write that email. If we are finding these skills, definitely we are going to give you a good scholarship. Also if you deserve that economic support and if you are really interested and we'll take you for our program and that's how it works and you can come and experience they have a trial program. Also people who want to upgrade themselves as a 2x3x designer, if you're already a fresher designer or two 3 years experience again in 90 days will help you earn 3x salary growth in your career. So if you want to really experience, I would highly recommend you can come into the program and experience it. Spread a word to your friend, you can do that as well. Okay. If you like this podcast, subscribe me in the Apple and space. Thank you guys so much and also let me know. Okay, take care. Bye bye. Sam.