Inclusive Society

The Idea of An Human-Centered Capitalism

November 17, 2019 Design Happenings

There’s plenty to appreciate about human-centeredness in design, undoubtedly, if there’s ever an era in our history to look into the depths of human needs to innovate it has come now. We have been doing it all with technology but now it requires us to move away from tech talk and focus on social justice for an inclusive society with ‘human-centered capitalism’.

“We need to move to the next stage of capitalism, a human-centered capitalism, where the market serves us instead of the other way around.”

The “Freedom Dividend”: Inside Andrew Yang’s plan to give every American $1,000

Quoting the Democratic 2020 Democratic Presidential candidate, entrepreneur and non-profit founder Andrew Yang, from an event in New Hampshire. His policy proposal called “Freedom Dividend”, a universal basic income (UBI) plan that aims to provide $1000 per month / $12000 per annum for every American adult above the age of 18. Although the concept of universal basic income isn’t innovative in itself but the idea of designing an economy centred around human-needs does produce an intriguing justification. The task of designing an economy centred solely around human needs & desires, employment challenges, cultural mindsets and based on considerations such as the demographics of the population and their skills would be compelling. Depending upon how it matches up to the potential of some populist dimensions ‘human-centered capitalism’ could be a permanent feature for governments to steer the economy in various directions. And I’m seriously drawn towards making the idea of social justice for an inclusive society through ‘human-centered design’ possible.

“The freedom dividend stacks on top of Social Security, it stacks on top of anything healthcare related, such as Medicare. It stacks on top of housing assistance,” Yang replied. “The things it does not stack on top of are essentially cash and cash like benefits. So this is SNAP, heating oil, other programs that are essentially trying to put cash in your hands to manage an expense.”

The “Freedom Dividend”: Inside Andrew Yang’s plan to give every American $1,000

It means, regardless of whether individuals who are above the age of 18 are employed/unemployed, the government promises to pay $1000 to enable them to pay their bills, which I believe if and when it’s implemented, would be a safety net to safeguard people’s future. It’s a brilliant strategy to put money into people’s hands and set free the future generations from the clutches of rising debt, unemployment, and above all, prevent them from abject poverty and finally, homelessness.

The Crux of Human-Centered Capitalism

Apart from the benefits that I have already outlined so far, the implementation of the UBI plan would instinctively kickstart economic growth and rise in employment. As stated in the brief on “Freedom Dividend” which would “[…]permanently grow the economy by 12.56 to 13.10 percent—or about $2.5 trillion by 2025—and it would increase the labour force by 4.5 to 4.7 million people.” However, it doesn’t mention an important aspect of the UBI which is, there might be a significant drop in the rate of chronic diseases and mental disorders owing to the apparent change in the overall lifestyle choices of the people, that would also stop taxing the economy. There’s no doubt that rolling out the UBI would definitely prove to be a boon for the economically weaker section of the society on a global scale without getting caught in the hype of ‘taxing the rich and gifting the poor’.

What’s An Inclusive Society?

In passing, I loved the definition of an ‘Inclusive Society’ from the draft of a UN’s document on the subject, and I’m going to leave it right here for readers to think about and envision what kind of world they’d like to live in? Most prominently, I’m excited about the possibilities and looking forward to the time when an opportunity would arise to collaboratively design an inclusive society using the principles of human-centered design as a pivoting tool.

An inclusive society is a society that over-rides differences of race, gender, class, generation, and geography, and ensures inclusion, equality of opportunity as well as capability of all members of the society to determine an agreed set of social institutions that govern social interaction. (Expert Group Meeting on Promoting Social Integration, Helsinki, July 2008)

Creating an Inclusive Society: Practical Strategies to Promote Social Integration; DESA 2009
Photo by Papaioannou Kostas on Unsplash

Innovative Thinking And User-Centred Design

October 10, 2019 Design

The term “innovation” has become the favourite lexicon of corporate executives for any discussion relating to building a vision for their organizations, and obviously the startups who need to raise eyebrows for getting noticed and getting funded. ‘Innovation’ has an aura that sets our imagination rolling, often conjuring up an impression of an impossible modern future replete with robots, gadgets, and automative mechanisms. In short, it’s presumed that innovation would hand out an inventive gadget, service, or product that will make our lives a lot pleasurable with delightful interactions. For instance, skillfully using technologies such as AI to track your location and provide an accurate weather forecast or respond smartly to your question, putting wireless sensors so that you’re able to park your car smoothly. As I write this article there are numerous startups engrossed in experimenting with future technologies in shaping our landscape. Although the role of the ‘customer’ is being diminished somewhere between the business, the investors’ expectations & the discussion surrounding innovative technology. It’s not just a need to involve the target audience in an end-to-end product or service development activity but critically put the ‘customer’ in the centre of every innovation conversation.

Innovation by Design

Innovation Through Customer Insights

Organizations have acknowledged the significance of customer experience in sustaining future innovations, during and after any innovative idea is launched. However, the intrinsic drive of entrepreneurs to solve problems through technology has never gained so much visibility than in recent times as companies make attempts at product development for market dominance & financial gains. At times, this drives focus away from the customer experience and onto developing features that may miss the target audience invariably putting the entire roadmap of the product in jeopardy. For some startups or companies, the issue of relentless product development without managing customer expectations seems to be emanating from their internal challenges that are dictated more or less by corporate decisions. So for instance, on a strategic level, senior stakeholders choose a platform for driving automation for customer needs either without an understanding of the user-base or taking insights from a previous product launch. Eventually, by the time the “idea” percolates down to the tactical phase, one cannot rule out the complexity of its interaction and flow regardless of whether it’s solving any problems based on the experience that it delivers (or it doesn’t). Organizations back their leadership’s decisions of shaping the vision and it’s left upon the dev & design teams to implement the final product, within a strict timeline, despite the glaring loopholes and no understanding of the evolving user base. Designers obviously take a backseat.

Continue reading…

So Close Yet…Not Done!

September 6, 2019 Happenings
Chandrayaan-2
Vikram (lander) with Pragyan (rover)

I never thought I’d write this post on a sombre note because along with the rest of a billion folks I was cheering for the Chandrayaan-2 and the Vikram landing. But space exploration is nothing if not a game for cantankerous nerves and success is never taken for granted. The ‘Vikram’ lander was primed for a precise touch down on the southern pole of the Lunar surface which was to be done autonomously.

Now comes the crucial part. The lander was descending at a high speed and was programmed to brake to descend slowly, hover and then land softly on the rocky, cold and dark lunar surface. From the mission control, after the ‘Rough Braking’ phase ended at 2.1 km the green dot on the red trajectory line wobbled and suddenly dropped vertically, I knew right then that something had gone wrong. It brought a lump to my throat when I watched the ISRO chairman approach the PM of India in the viewing gallery and my worst fears had come true. Losing communication with the lander obviously meant it had crashed but there was still a glimmer of hope because the orbiter was still communicating with the lander. Only 3 nations before this have had the privilege to land spacecraft on the Moon and India came very close in achieving that rare feat today! Her day would come pretty soon.

My fingers crossed bu the lander Vikram has been lost in all probability although the orbiter would continue sending pictures of the Lunar surface for the next year. That to me is a resounding success for the Chandrayaan-2 mission. There were several aspects linked to the success of the indigenously-designed ‘Pragyan’ rover as well including confirming data of the presence of water for setting up a future moon-base. Now all eyes would be transfixed on ISRO finding success in their next mission (especially, Gaganyaan), that’d cool the sting of this Lunar setback and put it on the backburner forever. More power to the scientists at ISRO!

Firefox 69 Brings ‘Privacy’ To The Forefront

September 4, 2019 Happenings Technology
Firefox Logo

Firefox had lost its charm since I personally began using it in the last decade but I have started using it since last year and loving the experience. Especially since it was always known to embrace the values of ‘online privacy’. It’s not that the topic of online privacy wasn’t around but since the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal blew up on our face it’s now taken centre stage in our lives. Now all of a sudden there has been a renewed interest in online privacy, securing browsing, ad tracking, and harder as it seems for companies, they are convincing their customers that their data is kept safe and not lost to some maniacal coding or business practice. Well, I’m happy that Mozilla has taken the lead in online privacy protection for others to take suit — I’m expecting at least Apple to reinforce Safari.

Firefox took an exemplary leap this week on the protection of users’ privacy with their latest update (Firefox 69) effectively making ‘privacy’ the centrepiece of its development process with a slew of features including limiting the use of Flash has been introduced, an archaic piece of program which I sincerely thought was gone, dead or buried forever but I was so wrong.

  • 100% of users now get the Enhanced Tracking Protection, working behind the scenes it keeps a company from forming a profile of the user based on the tracking of their browsing behaviour across websites often without knowledge or consent.
  • An option for blocking crypto miners was introduced in previous versions of Firefox Nightly and Beta but it’s now included in the ‘Standard Mode‘ of the Content blocking preferences today. There’s also a feature which blocks Fingerprinting scripts who harvest a snapshot of your computer’s configuration when you visit a website. This feature is not currently enabled by default (Preferences > Privacy & Security > Content Blocking > Enable Strict mode).
  • The “Always Activate” option for Flash plugin content has been removed. Firefox will now always ask for user permission before activating Flash content on a website.

A much-awaited ‘Block Autoplay’ feature has been released giving users the right to block audio and video. But the most noteworthy feature has come for Mac users in terms of battery-saving. Firefox, I sincerely believe, has finally come to rule the browser wars.

YouTube Started As A Dating Site

July 25, 2019 Design Technology

When I read this for the first time I cringed. It sounded unnatural that YouTube, the world’s largest online video streaming company with over a billion users each month, was conceived as an online video dating site! So here’s some back story. In March 2016 at the SXSW festival, YouTube co-founder Steve Chen revealed the actual predicament surrounding the launch of their streaming service in 2005. He said…

“We always thought there was something with video there, but what would be the actual practical application? We thought dating would be the obvious choice.”

Source

From Video Dating To Video Sharing

YouTube - Mobile

YouTube was conceived in 2005 by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim in 2005 while working for PayPal. The entrepreneurs initially found a market in matchmaking through video, even taking out ads on Craigslist in Las Vegas and Los Angeles in which they offered to pay women $20 to upload videos of themselves to the site. No one took the offer seriously. It didn’t matter to the founders, because by then, users had begun uploading all sorts of videos from dogs to their vacations and they began pondering over a fundamental question “why not let users define what YouTube is all about?” so they completely revamped their website, making it more open and general. By 2006, YouTube was already the fastest growing website on the Internet hosting more than 65,000 videos. Then on October 9, 2006, Google dropped a bomb by announcing they were acquiring YouTube for US$1.65 billion in stock. It was the second-largest acquisition for the search giant at the time.

Co-Design And User Innovation

Although it might seem like a case of ‘serendipity’ in the first instance with YouTube going from a video dating site to a video sharing one, here’s why I believe it was really a case of oversight. The founders formerly developed a vision to devise a product or service using online video streaming tech as a platform for matchmaking, but in that their vision of connecting with the users was grossly miscalculated because users just weren’t looking at video as a dating tool. Their initial concept could have been refined if they’d involved users in the conceptual stages of design iteration. The involvement of users early on provides the creators with an advantage at mobilising resources towards a focussed area of user’s concerns prior to the launch, although their open-mindedness did save them the day. As opposed to co-design or the user-centred model, it seems like YouTube followed a Linear Innovation Model consisting of research and development of product or service, which is then marketed and sent out to the users.

Speaking of which, co-design or the user innovation process is the act of designing concepts with the users (co-design is often referred to as participatory design by the design community) involving the intermediate users or direct consumers.

In other words, it’s not enough to involve engineers, designers, managers and other project owners into the creative process rather they need to be active co-designers in channelising energies into building actionable plans and implementing prototypes. That’s the way forward to meet some of the biggest challenges we face as humankind.

The innovation process comes with ambiguity and it’s often derailed due to several reasons, notwithstanding management oversight (like in the case of YouTube), misconceived notions about product utilization by end-users and last but not the least, being blinded by or trying to resolve the problems and challenges from a single spectrum thought process. In that, YouTube was created on the basic idea of connecting people through video streaming at cheaper rates but then it ultimately led to overlooking the users’ latent needs, a basic ingredient at shaping customers’ experience.

It’s quite likely, in a participatory design method, and by involving all the stakeholders of the soon-to-be-launching service the founders could have discovered to their surprise that instead of recorded videos users preferred to date using other discreet tools wherein their identities aren’t compromised or misjudged in the first impression. It’s dating after all. Lastly, the participatory design process should not be mistaken for crowdsourcing in which groups of interested parties contribute to the creation of ideas in an open forum, such as the Internet, in achieving a cumulative result. Imagine how different our world would be if end-users were involved as co-designers in every project, end-to-end, not just as research subjects but as an important aspect with any product or service design business. That’d be the true essence of any user-centred design methodology.