Ep 198| Top 10 Qualities to become a design thinker

Are you really aspiring to be a good or a great design thinker? In fact, there are some characteristics and traits which if you understand and if you try to make it as your habit on a regular day to day basis, you can eventually become a great design thinker and you can even invent some disruptive products which the world has never seen before. In this podcast, I'm going to give you top 10 attributes and qualities of becoming a design thinker in your career progress as a designer of. Okay, so take a lot of notes. I'm going to be splitting this into mindset, which is characteristics and physical and spiritual so that as a whole, if you become a person, you will be able to create products in a more holistic way. Okay, let's jump into this podcast. Welcome to Design for Change. Thank you for staying tuning in with me through this podcast. We are impacting 30 plus countries and thousands of listeners are listening. In this podcast today we are going to discuss top 10 qualities or attributes of becoming a design thinker. It's not like we have already become or something like that. It's like these are all the continuous traits which you will have to have in order to become that person. Okay, on a scale of 0 to 10, 10 being maximum, everybody falls in some numbers, right? Some people will be 10, some people will be 9, 8. So I'm also not perfect. Like all 10 out of 10. There are some imperfections, there are some improvements which I'm also working on myself. But when I record this podcast, I also keep a reminder of myself. How am I really doing in this factor? Okay, so I'll give you a small activity while you listen to this podcast. If you have a pen or paper or if you have your digital note taker, just rate your scale. When I tell each and every character, just like top 10 characters, I'll tell you each and every character. If I say you can just pause this podcast and rate yourself so that you'll have a scores at the end of this podcast where you are really standing and then you can plan your next steps. How you can reach to like let's say 7 to 9 or maybe 8 to 10 or being 3 to 10. So that's very much possible. Okay, it's the first point. I'll tell you what is that if you really wanted to become a great design thinker and if you want to really disrupt your product, first you need to have why you wanted to become a designer reason for it. You need to be absolutely clear on that. Are you having that? If you have that good but how congruent and strong you are in telling that. Like let's say in this I would rate myself as 10 because I found exactly the reason why I'm in. So you could rate it. If you have the score of five or six, that's okay, no problem. You can do it. Improve it a little later by retrospecting yourself. First thing. Okay, second thing, always have a data research collection and decision making towards that. Do not get a biased decision maker. If you're already having a lot of biases in your thinking process, what happens is you will not become a design thinker. Eventually you'll be just driven by that circumstances and situation. So no bias action. That's the second important quality to become. So write down your scores, how much you wanted to become. Like let's say I would say 8 myself. So there is a still improvement to become 9 or 10. The third important thing is be curious and work hard. You need to be very curious. The moment if you become very curious, you will automatically start asking a lot of questions. You will never settle for anything which is unreasonable. Like you will ask, you will demand a question, you will demand a justification. Because that will fulfill your curiosity as well as justify the logic of why people do what they do. Okay, I repeat this. Why people do what they do. If you have got a clarity in this, you can do a better research than any UX designers or UI designers or any product designers, even ethnographic designers. Guys, people don't get the clarity in this basics, they just collect data, they just do research. They just build some products and services which is not even relevant for the market and the people. Okay, Third important character. Asking questions, collecting information and having a mindset of justification with questioning and reasoning. Okay, Fourth is you need to be face to face guy. Always rely on methods of going to field, asking people. Understand what people say and understand what people don't say. Try to read in between the lines. That's one of the great, great quality I would say as a designer and inbuilt with that. You need to be well groomed, neat, trimmed, what you call cut, haircut, shave, whatever. If you are for someone who is really favorite in particular dresses or hairstyle or beard. Just make sure you are really well groomed in that if you're a man, woman, no matter what. Because the the way in which you present yourself, it attracts people to you and they'll in turn give you the information, whatever they know. Lot of times designers really make a very shabby dressing and other things. So people don't even respect them on that context without giving a proper data to the research, which will in turn reduce the quality of the research. What you do, it's very important, okay? To become a great design thinker. This is one of the great quality. Fifth is have a proper prior planning. Guys, there seems to be a quote like 6p. Proper prior planning prevents poor performance, okay? My mentor used to say so whenever you have this, please plan it in fear. You have a project plan, you have a definition, you have a clear understanding of your business goals. You have a clear understanding of your user goals, sustainability goals, manufacturability goals. And then and only you will be able to make a user centric product and satisfy the market. So have this thought process. You need to be very, very good in thinking and planning with understanding business in mind, user in mind, manufacturability in mind, sustainability and environmental in mind, okay? The sixth is you need to first have a clear written goal. What you wanted to really achieve in your career. Your aspiration should be good. You need it needs to be really, really high, which needs to inspire you. Even if somebody wakes you up at the middle of the night, you should be able to tell very clearly what's your goal you wanted to achieve and design the moment. If you have this, the way in which you see the project is much more different than the other people say, let's say your colleagues, let's say you're senior, let's say your boss. Your attitude and mindset will be in a whole new different level. Guys. That's why this is a top 10 qualities I'm saying, okay? The seventh important attribute I would say is have a mindset to fail always. Fail, fail, fail fast. I'm not asking you to what you call dwell on that failure forever. I'm asking you if some failure is happening. Embrace that and have fun. Go and have ice cream. Go and have some fun. And then get back and find reason why it failed. Improve, improve, iterate, iterate until you reach this is the exact solution. You know, you can learn from the nature. Nature doesn't stop, it keeps evolution. It keeps evoluting. It keeps continuously evolving and it becomes the best of the best. Whether it's a plant, whether it's a human, whether it's an animal, whether it's a species, anything. Guys. Evolution is the part of the nature. How does evolution happen? By failure. Natural breeding and select natural selection and selective breeding, right? So failure is a part of the system inspired from the biomimicry, inspired from the nature. You will get a Mindset of failure is a part of the game. The more you fail, the faster you fail, the better your products will be. Seventh, important quality. Okay, so the seven qualities what I've explained you now, it's all about mindset. Which is why you need to be a designer. Need to be very clear. You need to be always no bias action guy. Third is you need to ask a lot of questions and be curious and collect information. Fourth is have a face to face time with people, well presented yourself groomed. And fifth is planning. Sixth is very clear goals. Seventh is having a mindset of failure. Now let's get into 8th important thing which is being fit and healthy. See, it's not a generic term. I'll tell you very specifically. If you want to really become healthy, you need to be first stay in your ideal weight. Your height in centimeter. Like let's say 150, 160 centimeter you are minus 100 is your exact ideal weight. Like let's say if you're having 160 centimeter, you should be 60 kilograms the moment. If you stay in your ideal weight, you will really function. Your maximum potential efficiency. Same goes for your fat. If you want to be really fit, you need to maintain your fat percentage. If you're a man, it should be 10 to 15 percentage. If you're a woman, it should be 20 to 30 percentage. Hey, what's up? What happened? Jagdish? How does it matter when I have a fat? More or less? I'll tell you what happens. Even if you're an ideal weight, sometimes if your fat is really high, you have a higher chance of heart diseases, coronary diseases, cholesterol. And then you will have your brain really slowed down because of the fat accumulated in your body. You will get more anxiety, nervous. Your body functioning will not happen properly when you have a lot of fat. That is why it is very, very vital to keep fat. Percentage 10 to 20% if you are a man and 30 Percentage if you are a woman. Health checkup and find it out. Try finding a good fitness past or good nutritionist. Check your food habits to make your fitness routines and rigid so that stay healthy and fit. Your thinking and process and your activeness will go high like anything the moment. If you are having that clarity, your productivity will be like super, super important. Guys, 9 out of 10 designers don't even care about this point. That is why they are not very much successful. Okay? It's very, very, very vital. And nobody is going to tell you this. The ninth important aspect. Being a, being a Very good design thinker is you need to be always in the mind of service. You need to solve the problem, serve the people, Solve the problem, serve the people. It's fine, you're getting money, you're getting paid, you're getting job, it's all fine. But. But inherently, if your real reason of why you wanted to become a designer and what are the reason and the purpose you wanted to really be in this field will always touch upon the last point which is serving in humanity. If you really touch upon this pots this aspect, you'll see a greater fulfillment when you really solve a problem. Okay, it's little spiritual point, but end of the day this really matters. Guys, you need to connect these dots because I believe physical, mental, spiritual, all these three contributes and constitutes a full human being. If you are making yourself as a full human being, you will see the fullest potential of yourself so that you become a great design thinker over the journey. And the last but not the important least quality of a designer. Always thank people for what they do. If you're doing a research, if you are working with a manager, if you're working with a client, if you're working with your colleague, thank, thank, thank. Always be thankful for even the smallest thing they do. The moment you as your everyday habit, in your brain there is a small system called gratitude center, okay? Blood glucose and sucrose goes into that gratitude center. And then you'll feel really happy and fulfilled and you will get more things drawn into your life. One of my mentors, Dr. John Demartin tells this. He did a lot of research there. He did a lot of scientific journals and research to understand the gratitude center. And he keeps asking people to have a gratitude diary and write every single day. What is the one moment which you can thank? What is the best thing which you can thank in your life? Even for the bad things you can thank because of bad things only you're here. So it's not about a some kind of a Baba topic or some kind of a topic which people what you call don't want to talk to. It's all a part of human guys. If you have these 10 qualities like let's say particularly the last three habits like being fit and healthy, having a mindset of serving for the humanity, having your gratitude always and your mindset seven qualities which I told you, you will be the version two of yourself and then you will never go back to your old habits. Guys, make sure you rate all this course and then put it in this podcast, okay? Your privacy will be secured, it's going to come only to me. And then if you need to improve that to one point or maybe 10 percentage or 20 percentage, definitely I can able to help you guys. You can write that email dfc designforchangemail.com me or my team will help you out because each of these aspects I teach in my program to help you becoming a holistic designer so that you can really disrupt by designing your products and services. Okay. I hope this podcast would have made you sense of how you can go in this journey and where are you right now to analyze using that skill? Thank you so much. We'll see you in another episode. If you find this information valuable, you can rate me in Spotify and Apple 5 stars and you can write your comments. What do you think? Okay. Thank you. Take care. Bank.