We live in a world where ideas are a dime a dozen. Go to a coffee shop in any metropolitan city in the world and I will bet you one US dollar that someone there is working on an idea. The term “idea” is broad. It feels all-encompassing. This word represents something that is in your brain that might materialize in the real world. While creating ideas can sometimes feel like an easy task, the execution is the hardest part.

During my journey as an entrepreneur, I read a lot of content on how to scale an idea once it’s alive. While this information is great, there is a lack of actionable guidance around small experiments to test your idea until now. Recently, I had an idea for a potential venture that I wanted to explore. Using the Lean Start-Up concept of a Wizard of Oz test, I tracked the inception, pain points, tests, results and next steps of my work all through the lens of design thinking.

Inception

As an Indian-American who loves food, I often get asked, “where can I get good Indian food in [insert city]?” The answer I give is not encouraging. Often the best Indian cuisine is not cooked in restaurants but rather in home kitchens. It’s made by mothers and fathers who have relied on these foods for comfort and connection over the course of a lifetime. This insight identified an unmet need for people who are enthusiastic about Indian food but do not have the means or know how to create it.

Using design thinking, I challenged my perspective and viewed this as an opportunity. How might we give a non-Indian audience the chance to experience an authentic home cooked Indian meal?

The Pain Point

This problem statement led to a conversation around cooking Indian food at home. Specifically, it surfaced how difficult it is for non-Indians to source the essential spices needed to cook. From this process, we ideated around potential solutions. My first spice kit was given to me by my mother. It was a sentimental gesture that pointed to the fact that I was moving away from home and needed to preserve our family’s cooking traditions. Not everyone has an Indian mother so this led to three questions.

1. What if every person who was interested in cooking Indian food had this type of emotional experience?
2. What if we took the hard part of sourcing ingredients away and focused on the fun of learning a new cuisine?
3. Could we sell a basic Indian spice starter kit that fostered a connection to Indian food and culture?

The test

An unsaid struggle of being a founder is taking ambition and making it actionable. With this idea, I immediately let my imagination spin out of control. I saw my little spice startup idea on the shelf sharing space with giants like McCormick. Before I could allow myself to worry about being big, I needed to put the brakes on. I needed to think small and take an experiment based approach.

For this test, I needed an expert who knew the as-is spice buying experience, so I called my mom. I worked with my mom to establish the essential spices of Indian cooking. We then looked at a handful of popular recipes and realized that on average, you rarely need more than a few teaspoons of spices to cook. This insight allowed us to scope our idea further.

With knowledge in hand, I had my mom go to the local Indian grocery store and buy one package of each of our seven essential spices — a total cost $20 dollars. We took these spices and sat down at the dinner table, grabbed some Ziploc bags and some tape (~$3) to start bagging and tagging. Initially, we were able to make twenty-two kits for a grand total of ~23$. The goal was to bring the idea to life — to get the kit good enough so that people could use it and we could receive feedback.

The User

Choosing a target user can be hard especially when you are trying to solve a seemingly large problem. By using the design thinking tool of persona sketch we were able to add some clarity to our near term user. We wanted to connect with someone who was either non-Indian or first generation American-Indian. This is someone who loves eating Indian food but does not know how to cook it. We thought, in general, we were targeting the early stage home-cook. Does this sound like someone you might know? Perfect.

Once you have a user dialed in, it’s important to find a test market. For us, it was using my audience of social media. Instagram has a great little feature in their stories section that allows you to post a poll.

I had about ~800 followers who aligned with our persona sketch. This audience allowed for a good base of folks to see if this idea could materialize any further.

I started with a simple question “Do you want to learn to cook Indian food.” Of my 800 followers, this post reached 300 people. Of those viewers, 92% voted yes! This quick poll not only allowed me to gauge interest but encouraged me to take it a step further. I needed to see what was my product market fit given my customer base. So I asked a follow-up question to my audience.

Again, the results were overwhelming! So many potential people wanted to 1. Learn about Indian cooking and 2. Were interested in the product idea that I had. So how do I capitalize on this base?

Pricing

Product interest is a misleading thing. When you see a large volume of potential customers, the excitement is overwhelming. In the early stages of idea validation, this can create a false positive. One of the biggest misconceptions that new entrepreneurs have is that in order to test, you must give away your products for free. When creating products it seems logical to say, “Well I want to learn, so I’ll just give it away.” I fundamentally think this is wrong because when giving items away for free, information about price points and the threshold of interest is lost. By associating a value with your product, even if it’s the break-even amount, it forces consumers to make a decision. “Is X product worth $Y?” This is a great way to understand the realistic runway of your idea. It helps you answer the question of, “will people actually buy this?”

From the lesson above, we knew that we wanted to sell our spice kits but had no idea for how much. I did some competitive research and looked online at potential competitor spice kits on sites like Etsy and Amazon. From this research, I found that the price point of $5–6 dollars before shipping seemed to be common.

So we had a product idea, we had the interest, we had a price point, now we needed to look legitimate. In the essence of time, I could not invest a lot of mental capital into physical packaging. Instead, I created a mockup in Photoshop. Doing this was fast and cheap. If the packaging didn’t attract customers then it gave me an option to iterate. One .PNG export later, I took to my Instagram story again to try and convert sales.

The Results

Almost immediately, I started getting direct messages asking how to buy. To be honest, I did not think that far ahead. Sometimes the most effective way to solve a problem is not the most advanced. In this instance, I ended up telling people that if they sent me 10 dollars via Venmo, I would mail them a package. I recognize that this is not scalable but in the near term, but we needed simple.

This process of trying to convert sales turned out to be a reality check. Of my ~800 followers, 315 people showed interest through the poll. 36 people messaged me saying they would like to buy but once given an option to actually pay, only 22 converted to sales.

This means of a potential customers base of 800, I was able to convert sales at a rate of 3%. Good, not great. This resulted in about $220 in sales and lead to enough profit which would allow us to keep iterating on the idea.

So why is this important?

The goal as stated in the beginning was not to get rich but to test an idea that was floating around in my head.

From this experience came a handful of important lessons…

1. Often times, the market feels bigger than it is. Through our design thinking work, we identified a target customer and a pain point to build a test around. On paper, there are tens of thousands of potential customers. In reality,, less than 3% of our test audience converted to sales. In the startup world, that fallacy of potential market size is real. My recommendation from this process is to crush your niche. Deliver exceptional value to a small group of people then expand.
2. People’s willingness to buy reduces when asked for payment. When you’re excited about a new idea, it is easy to get caught up in confirmation bias. People early on might say “this is a great idea!” but when asked if they wanted to buy, their opinion changes. Experimenting with the price point, volume, and marketing are all good avenues when faced with this problem. Finding customers who identify with your product or idea is good. Finding customers who are willing to pay is even better
3. This is step 1 of infinity. From this process, I learned so much about my idea. I followed up with my customers and created a list of new areas of research. Doing small tests allow you to learn from mistakes quickly when costs are low. I can’t imagine sinking thousands of dollars into a venture without running a ~$23 dollar test first.

Please heart & share this guide and please voice your questions, comments or concerns below!

Paper Mentorship is a collection of stories, advice, and guides which focus on entrepreneurship through the lens of design thinking. All views, opinions and, guidance expressed are that of the author and not a representation of any companies or other interests.

In the startup world, founders regularly pitch me amazing ideas about revolutionary technologies that could change the world. Unfortunately, what I learned is that great ideas do not always equal good companies. The reality of working with startups is that we invest money, time and energy in the art of the possible. I have first hand seen many startups fail because they don’t actually understand how to build a company. This stunts their ability to create the right product, which ultimately leads to failure. Seeing this as a commonality, I asked myself, how can we prevent this?

A few years back I learned about design thinking. This framework’s roots are in building a deep understanding of your users. By putting your user first, it allows you to make decisions faster and with more certainty. The core of decision making when it comes to a startup’s products or services should be insights from your customer base. If you do not understand your customers then you will not understand how to adapt to the market. Design thinking can be the fast lane to these types of breakthroughs.

When someone pitches me on an idea, I ask three very simple questions. It is surprising how many people cannot provide clear answers.

1. Who are the early adopters?

2. What value are you providing the early adopters?

3. What does near term success look like?

If you are starting or growing a company and want guidance, below I go through each question and provide design thinking activities that will help with articulation. Grab a marker and some post-its and follow along.

Question One. Who are the early adopters?

Often times in design thinking we will ask the question of “who are your users?” This is a reflective question for people who might already have a product or service in the market. If you’re trying to get a company off the ground a way to re-frame this is, “who are your early adopters?” Early adopters are the people who once you start off will need to be the first users. An activity I use to help founders understand their users early on is the Persona Sketch. This tool allows you to align on the basic demographics of an early adopter. Below you can see the basic template of a persona sketch.

Let’s see what one looks like for a company we see regularly. In the case of a company like AirBnB, these were the people who needed a place to stay during the busy San Francisco conference season.

What about something not in the tech industry? For a company like Shake Shack, these were the people in Madison Square Park who were ordering when they were a food cart.

When you are starting off think near term. Who are the people that you would want to learn from in the next 4–8 weeks?

Once you have a picture of your early adopters, it’s good to ask yourself, how might you find those people? Are they old clients, people at the supermarket, members of an online forum or a meetup? The goal here is to build relationships with your early adopters so that you can validate your ideas and test changes.

Question Two. What value are you providing your early adopters?

One of the best parts of living in this modern age is our ability to have options. Walk into a store and go look at the honey aisle.

At first glance, it looks like there are so many choices of virtually the same product but each one serves a different need. Do you want raw honey? Do you want only mountain flower, honey? Are you sugar-free? Do you want organic? The companies above understand their target users and their needs out of a product. As a consumer, options are a great thing to have. As an entrepreneur, it means there is ample competition.

When thinking about your product or service, ask yourself what value am I going to give my users immediately?

Prior I talked about early adopters a.k.a your first customers. How are you going to make sure that you are solving one of their problems? Start by understanding what they actually need. In design thinking, we use the activity of needs statements to build empathy for our users. The framework is simple but I find value in going through this activity a few times.

Let’s do one for the AirBnB early adopter we identified above.

These needs statements help you get to the core of what your user’s problems are and the value you bring. When used properly this will provide momentum and guidance for future decisions.

Question Three. What does near term success look like?

In entrepreneurship, there is an exhaustive focus on vision and scaling. While long term planning can be helpful, it’s more important for startups to think near term. It is a lack of articulation of what a company is going to do in the next 4–12 weeks that will stunt a team’s ability to deliver. We focus so much on what could happen one, two, five years out that we forget that tomorrow we need to do something!

This answer will look different for every company but I take this time to reflect and plan. I am a big fan of writing out milestones per week, month and year.

Ex. For a food truck restaurant concept, “By the end of week 2, I want to interview five potential customers about where they spend time during the summer”

Ex. For a tech startup “By the end of week five, I want to have a clickable prototype to take to my users to see how they react to our user experience.”

The goal here is to break down your big ideas into actionable steps so that you know you are making progress toward the larger vision. From this process, you can also break down your milestones into sub-tasks if you think it would be beneficial.

Often times you see founders going off track because they don’t have a plan. This is step one in that process of trying to make your ideas a reality. By taking a user-centered approach you are finding the problems that are actually worth solving and holding yourself accountable to the outcomes.

So how did you do?

Early stage companies generally need very little which is why I find these three questions so important. I have found that many founders early on receive a lot of bad advice.

Too often we glamorize the process of scaling, getting seed money or hiring a bunch of people. Unfortunately, we focus on these things instead of understanding and validating our ideas with a real customer base. Remove those points of stress and refocus on your users. In this article, we quickly covered how to gain insights into how your customers think, feel and react. This process will allow you as an entrepreneur to be more productive, save time, save money and actually build a great product or service. When you’re toying around with an idea for a startup, ask yourself the three questions above. Do the activities and see how far you can get. Document your findings and where you got stuck. I promise, having these artifacts will save you headaches down the road.

Please heart & share this guide and please voice your questions, comments or concerns below!

Paper Mentorship is a collection of stories, advice, and guides which focus on entrepreneurship through the lens of design thinking. All views, opinions and, guidance expressed are that of the author and not a representation of any companies or other interests.

How To Build a Start Up With Design Thinking was originally published in Paper Mentorship on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Intro

TravelMore is an eCommerce company, which focuses on sourcing and selling travel gear. Starting in 2015 they were able to build the company from $0 to over $2,000,000 in sales to date. In the summer of 2016, they were starting to encounter a growth problem. They had designed a new backpack called the Jetpack 20L but did not know how to launch the product at scale. Their co-founder reached out to me to consult with the team as a design strategist. Over the course of two months, I was able to build an understanding of the user, establish a growth strategy, build a full Kickstarter campaign, promote the product via social media and bring in ~900 sales equaling ~$50,000.

Strategy

Off the bat, the team knew we wanted to do a Kickstarter. The popular crowdfunding platform was a great way to capture new customers. We wanted to find those who generally align with the early adopter model. The downside is that Kickstarter is extremely competitive and more often than not, companies do not meet their funding goals. To learn the space, I read everything I could about good and bad campaigns. I recognized that there were two keys to meeting your funding goal. One, have a good product and two tell the right story.

Process

From my first meeting with TravelMore, I immediately knew they had done their research. The co-founders had traveled the world talking with backpackers who were on shoestring budgets. Through their conversations, they identified a need. Global backpackers need an affordable day-pack that was comfortable, collapsible and durable.

I started with some simple competitive analysis of other players in the market. I saw that in this space, no one was catering to the traveler but rather the outdoorsy, camping hobbyist. We needed to understand who a potential buyer was. Who are they? What was their age? Do they work? What do they do for fun? Do they have a stable income? What inspires them and what pisses them off? We created a simple persona and coupled that with a mood board to show visually our user’s lifestyle.

Once the team understood the user, we could think about how to reach them most effectively. The new day-pack was supposed to inspire travel and the lifestyle that came with being abroad. How do you communicate that via Kickstarter?

We began to look for inspiration around how to frame what the message of our campaign should feel like. I understood that once someone lands on the page, we have moments to capture their attention. We needed something engaging that would convert them to a sale. I found inspiration in the popular vlogging videos by famous lifestyle YouTubers like Casey Neistat. I also wanted to incorporate the adventure aspect of traveling. I loved the way which action sports companies like GoPro and Redbull had the ability to tell a story with beautiful panning scenes and high impact words. This aligned with our users’ habits and the content that he or she consumed daily.

I began to start laying out a rough storyboard of what a potential campaign video would look like. It took shape trying to answer these five questions for our user.

1. Who is TravelMore?
2. What is their story?
3. What is the product?
4. What is the value?
5. How do I buy one?

I wanted to make sure that the video was to the point. It would be the first thing the user sees and if it did not draw them in, we would fail. I set a two-minute duration cap at most to force myself to achieve this goal. We were able to leverage our network of friends and gather a lot of b-roll footage which focused on adventure and excitement. I went back and forth with the co-founders on the messaging and the copy. We ended up working together and producing a one minute and thirty-second long teaser. It was a happy medium of engaging and informative, achieving our original goal.

There was a strict $2000 advertising budget for this project.The majority was used to drive targeted Facebook ads. Our thought was social media was a big part of our user’s life and we had a hypothesis that Facebook might be the best way to communicate with customers. We set parameters with information from our original persona to find potential buyers. We also subscribed to a few booster websites but the ROI we found was not as high compared to direct ads.

Outcomes

The campaign was completed after 30 days and raised almost $50,000 exceeding the original funding goal by 650%.

Total impressions for the duration of the campaign was 46,936. Of those page views we had 28,234 users with an average bounce rate of 80.75%.

Of those people we were able to capture 19,901 views of the video with 33% of people watching the whole video.

Our growth was consistent day over day, compounding an average of around $1000 a day +/- around $500.

This brings our sale per session to $1.42 ($48,754 sales / 34,137 sessions).

I am proud to say that in the competitive space of Kickstarter, the TravelMore Jetpack 20L campaign was the fastest fully funded day-pack in Kickstarter history.

Please heart & share this guide and please voice your questions, comments or concerns below!

Naveen Raja is a design thinking & strategy facilitator. His passion for design has allowed him to vision, scope and scale design facilitation programs for companies both large and small. Through helping various teams at Consensys, The World Bank, SAP, IBM, Fidelity Investments, Citibank, Marriott Hotels and more he is perfecting his recipe for how to help people to achieve more by using design. He is passionate about how people, places and cultures intermix and the significance it can play on creating an experience. You can find more at Educate and Iterate, a design thinking resources website.

How Design Thinking Turned an Idea into $50,000 of sales. was originally published in Paper Mentorship on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The new year is upon us, so now is the time to set resolutions. As a facilitator, I get asked, “what can I do to practice design thinking regularly?” I have always been a fan of small changes to create a lasting effect. So what can we do?

This idea came to me when I attended the most recent Design at Business UnConference in Florida. My team and I thought about what could someone do daily, weekly, monthly and yearly to flex those design thinking muscles?

The list we created includes actionable ideas and curated resources packed up tight in a way that would rival 1990s Infomercial hit.

Daily

Define Questions We Want To Answer

• As design thinkers, we pride ourselves on the ability to problem seek. Daily, there is value in thinking about the questions that you are trying to answer for the projects on your plate. Sounds simple right?

Look At Your Calendar and Ask “Do I need to be there?”

• In facilitation, we teach and train to ask “why?” Modern workplaces love meetings. How can you help you or your team be more effective with the time we set aside to collaborate?

Take Visual Notes

• Embrace creativity daily and draw out ideas. A sketch can be the clarifying difference to someone understanding how you think.

Ask human-centered questions “How does this affect people?”

• A pillar of what design thinking stands on is empathy. Daily, how can you bring in and advocate for your users during the design, development, delivery process?

Weekly

Read 1–2 Articles about Design Thinking

• Design thinking is broad in application. Keeping up with relevant news is a great way to see how people approach the space. A few places we love are Medium , Fast Company , HBR , Educate & Iterate , Invision App

Spend 30 minutes Reflecting on Your Current Work

• It is healthy to spend some time weekly thinking about how things are going. Was there a method you used which helped your team tremendously? Did you make a change that was beneficial? What is causing you stress? Take a moment for yourself and reflect.

Journal your experiences

• The space of design thinking is ever changing. Do not be afraid to jot down ideas, observations, learnings or frustrations. Use post-its, a notebook or explore a digital method like Evernote. Find something that works for you and start writing.

Monthly

Find An Opportunity For Mentorship

• One of the many things I love about the Design Thinking community is the willingness to share. As a practitioner, there is so much value in learning from others. Deepa Iyer of SAP shared how she tries to reach out to a new person either internally or externally to receive mentoring. These conversations are invaluable. Put yourself out there and seek out guidance.

It’s also good to mention that if you are in a position of delivering guidance, vocalize that you are open to having a mentee.

Gain A New External Perspective

• Expanding your viewpoint is hard. Monthly we recommend trying to attend an event like meetup or an e-learning seminar. If life is busy, something quick is to have a conversation with someone who you don’t always see eye-to-eye. Broaden your mind and learn from people with different experiences.

Check In With Previous Teams

• Design thinking as a facilitator often looks like workshops. Monthly it’s a good habit to check in with the teams that you may have supported in the past. What is working for them? What blockers have shown up? This shows the longevity of design thinking outside of the workshop experience. It begins to blend the lines of how we use our practice as a continual strategic initiative.

Share and Celebrate Success, Failure, Results, and Learning

• The design thinking community needs more content. We need to be better about sharing our breath of experiences. Everything from a disastrous workshop to knocking a project out of the park. Take time monthly to create an artifact of your journey and share it far and wide with your peers.

Meet Users and Hear Their Needs

• Hearing from your users is the single most important thing you can do in design thinking. Everything from informal coffees and phone calls to going onsite to see a day in the life. Any time you spend engaging with your users is time well spent.

Rework Your Curriculum

• As facilitators and practitioners, we use different methods to understand the problem space. Monthly I like to rework my activities and make updates to keep my methods fresh.

Yearly

Take Formal Training

• Design thinking changes constantly and continuing education is important. As lifelong learners, programs like Alt MBA, Strategyzer, AIGA Design Ranch, Invision’s Design Better.Co or even a course at your local university is a great way to build community and practice all while staying current.

Appraise and celebrate your year

• You are great. I promise. Take time at least once a year to celebrate your accomplishments. Be proud of the work you have done and continue to do. Innovation is not easy.

Start small. Find little ways to implement in design thinking into your work. Not everything will stick but flexing those muscles for just 8 minutes a day will change your world.

Thanks to Deepa Iyer, Sylvie Charpentier, Brittany Gillman, Hadassah Damien for the collaboration!

Please heart & share this guide and please voice your questions, comments or concerns below!

Naveen Raja is a design thinking & strategy facilitator. His passion for design has allowed him to vision, scope and scale design facilitation programs for companies both large and small. Through helping various teams at Consensys, The World Bank, SAP, IBM, Fidelity Investments, Citibank, Marriott Hotels and more he is perfecting his recipe for how to help people to achieve more by using design. He is passionate about how people, places and cultures intermix and the significance it can play on creating an experience. You can find more at Educate and Iterate, a design thinking resources website.

The other week I got a text saying, “I need a 36 hour day.” Time is one of the few things we often feel like we do not have control of. As we get older and our lives become more hectic, how do we make time for things that matter?

Background

Last summer I took a new job in Chicago. I was living in the city and it felt like there was always something to do. Between on-boarding for my new role, my relationship, my social life and trying to stay healthy, I felt overwhelmed. I was ambitious about what I could do in a week and it always felt like I was falling behind. I had tried using different time management tools but could not find one that stuck. The VP of sales at my previous company introduced me to the concept of time blocking. I grabbed bits of information from him and started to make small changes which helped me feel more in control of my surroundings. Over a year later, I am less stressed and feel like I have a good handle on my time. Now as a remote worker, time blocking has become essential. It is the method I use to scope and plan my weeks.

I wanted to make this guide for beginners on how to start implementing in this methodology.

The Basics

The basics of time-blocking are simple. In this framework, you will view each day as 24, one hour slots. Each activity or task that you want to achieve in a given day is a “block.” For each block, you estimate how much time you think it will take in 10-minute increments. Looking at your upcoming week, place that block on your calendar. Try your best to stick to the calendar and consider yourself time blocked.

Example. I have a big presentation on Friday. I need to prepare for this presentation. I estimate it will take me 80 minutes to do that. On my calendar on Tuesday, I block off 1pm-2:20 pm to “Prep for Friday’s Meeting.” Now, during that time, I have set aside a clear runway to finish my task.

In the example above I did three things.

1. Identified a task
2. Blocked the time
3. Motioned to my peers I am not available so I could focus.

Simple enough?

Time blocking is not about finding more time but rather creating a sense of control of your time. Below are a handful of guidelines that can help in your adoption.

1. Set Up Your Calendars

The most basic version of time blocking could happen on paper. I, however, have found that digital calendars are amazing for this practice. Currently, my company uses the gSuite and I use Apple iCal in my personal life. I have set up my work calendars and personal calendars to play nice on my phone and laptop. This allows me regardless of the device to see what I am doing in both dimensions of my life. Getting in the habit of using a calendar is the first step to effective time management. I say with pride my life is run by my calendar.

2. Planning is Your Friend

To make time-blocking stick and work well it requires some planning. The biggest chunk of effort is listing out your tasks. The way I define tasks is anything that I have to do in a week. My calendar has everything from my work assignments, my gym time, my reminders to call my mother, and even my free time to relax.

For each task, I create a new block and I begin to estimate time by placing it on my calendar. This can start to feel like a game of Tetris. The goal is to have a cohesive understanding of what your week looks like at a glance. The goal is NOT to fill up every moment of your life with tasks. Understand the things you need to get done during the week and embrace the moments of white space.

3. Sunday Fun Days

Starting the week off right is one of the easiest things to put in place when it comes to time blocking. On your calendar every week on Sunday set aside 30 minutes to do a mental check-in and time blocking prep. By having a consistent reminder you will begin to build a routine. Additionally, I use this time to reflect on the previous week. What worked? What changes or experiments could I try? I’ve found this process to be mentally restorative.

You’re Not A Robot

I know it sounds scary to let your calendar dictate so much of your life. This process of time blocking sounds like all work and no play. Where I have found the most success in time blocking is actually my personal life. The beauty is in my conscious accounting for my free time. As a remote worker, if I was not in a meeting, I did not want to default to watching TV or surfing the internet. I wanted to make those moments of downtime count. I no longer say things like, “I wish I had time to do X.” When tasks go on my calendar I know there is nothing else I should be doing. This allows me to also relieve a lot of stress. If I block in a date-night or drinking a beer with friends, it feels very purposeful. I find this feeling liberating.

Learning To Say No

Distractions are the number one way to throw off effective time blocking. In our lives, distractions come in a lot of different forms. From co-workers these moments might be a “Hey can you hop on this call?” or “Can I grab you for a just minute?” From loved ones, it becomes, “Hey skip the gym and let’s go to happy hour” or “Let’s sleep in for another 30 minutes.” Since implementing in this framework, I have been better about saying no. When I plan out my weeks I can default to, “Sure, can you throw it on my calendar?” This ability to lean on some level of structure allows me to be confident in knowing I am working toward knocking out tasks.

Start Small

I have found that changes stick when implemented in small increments. For time-blocking, I first began with Sunday reflection and planning. Over the course of the year, I obtained more habits like blocking out reading time during lunch, and scheduling monthly calls with my mentor. The goal here is for you make small wins and take back control of your time. Deep breaths and happy blocking.

Please heart & share this guide and please voice your questions, comments or concerns below!

Naveen Raja is a design thinking & strategy facilitator. His passion for design has allowed him to vision, scope and scale design facilitation programs for companies both large and small. Through helping various teams at Consensys, The World Bank, SAP, IBM, Fidelity Investments, Citibank, Marriott Hotels and more he is perfecting his recipe for how to help people to achieve more by using design. He is passionate about how people, places and cultures intermix and the significance it can play on creating an experience. You can find more at Educate and Iterate, a design thinking resources website.

The Current State of Interviewing

If you have ever applied for a job, you know it is painful. As you read through role descriptions, you have to try and map your experiences to the 15+ bullet points that explain what this new role might be.

You write cover letter after cover letter trying to explain your “fit”. If you’re lucky, you get a phone screen from a recruiter. Articles online will tell you a good question to ask is “what are the next steps?” From that point, there is the tendency for this process to drag on. All of the back and forth communication makes you think by the time you are ready to join has the excitement of a new role worn off? My partner Eric Morrow and I wanted to change this. We wanted to remove the guesswork that comes with applying for a new job.

Assessing Need

Eric and I had only been at Consensys a few weeks as design thinking facilitators when we realized we needed help. The requests for workshops were flowing in. We had to take a good look at what type of new hires we needed; not just for today but for the future as the team grew. We went back and forth on this. When thinking about who we needed to hire, we decided to run a small workshop.

During this session, we went into Mural and laid out our skills and roles. What were Eric and I good at? What could we handle on our own and where did we need the help? What was our budget per facilitator? This process was collaborative. It allowed us to address our gaps in a realistic fashion and understand where we needed to grow.

The workshop was essential. Our original thought going in was we should stretch our budget and hire around 10 junior facilitators. The workshop surfaced a problem. Junior hires needed guidance and at that point, we did not have the time to provide it. We came to the realization that we would adjust our budget and instead hire four-strong senior facilitators. Their roles would be more robust and they would be in charge of the growth of facilitation for their region. This was the type of growth we needed for our team in the early stages.

The Interview Experiments

When building an experiment in design thinking, you seek to use a pain point to fuel a hypothesis. Below are our hypothesis, experiments and our insights of practicing self-organizing principles while recruiting and hiring facilitators.

Hypothesis One — Job Descriptions Suck

As identified in our as-is scenario, the job description experience is frustrating. If you have ever had to write a job description, it is really difficult. Eric spent a good few hours of time post workshop looking at our skill gaps. He then set out to try and create the best description he could. He tried to base it on what we knew at that time and how we saw the company and role evolving. This led to a medium article which we shared via our design communities and networks. In this job description, we wanted to test one specific thing. Does including an overview of the interview process allow us to recruit higher quality talent?

We knew that the process to vet a facilitators abilities was more than a glance at their resumé. We wanted to try our best to communicate to every prospective candidate that our interview was going to be rather involved (mural sessions, Zoom calls, etc.). Eric also pointed out in the article that this was our first time recruiting. We knew that every interview was a learning experience so please bear with us. By removing the smoke and mirrors we felt the candidate could see how we thought through and crafted the interview experience. Our goal was to allow every candidate to feel like they knew exactly what they were embarking on, no surprises.

Hypothesis Two — Cover Letters Suck

Cover letters are time-consuming and do not provide much value. They play up generic language and can feel cold. In our recruiting process, we wanted to understand a candidate’s personality. We wanted to lean into their experiences as facilitators and strategists. Our head of HR Danielle gave us an awesome idea. Instead of cover letters, we asked each candidate to film a one-minute “selfie” video explaining an insight that they uncovered during a workshop. This allowed us to test two things. First, brevity in compassionate storytelling. The work we do is complex and being able to play it back in a concise manner is crucial. The second was to get a general understanding of how they speak in front of a (digital) audience. As facilitators, we spend a lot of time in front of people.

The results we received were great! Our job listing got around 326 views and around 82 candidates. For candidates who applied, met our criteria and sent a video, they received a phone call from someone on our HR team. During this brief 15 minute call, we would get a general overview of their experience. We asked about their timeline to join a new team (this was important because requirements differ globally) and a general overview of their salary range (more on this later.) The videos allowed us to feel like we were building a relationship from the first minute we saw them. Anyone who is recruiting can benefit from this simple change.

Hypothesis Three — There Are No Right Answers

Eric and I were new to self-organizing principles and recruiting. We knew we did not want to be the sole deciders which meant we needed guidance. Our idea was to design a small workshop with various people who could add expertise from other parts of Consensys. This process turned out to be phenomenal. By adding in outside viewpoints we were able to see how a new hire might fit into the larger organization. From our HR rep, we learned things like, “Pitch the ambiguity. Be part of creating things.” From our peers, we gathered desires for candidates to have humility since Consensys has no room for ego. For anyone who is developing a team, I recommend going through a similar exercise.

We took our insights from the workshop and created our third experiment. The third candidate interaction was a one-hour Zoom call with at least one but generally two members of our team. We broke this one hour into three 20 minute parts to make good use of our and their time.

We chose to base the first 20 minutes on scenarios. Pre-interview, we would send the candidate a prompt about a mock workshop request. Our goal was for them to come in with a plan and we would get a chance to go through their thought process. During this time we would also throw in some rapid-fire questions to see how they thought on their feet. The ability to test for problem-solving is hard. When it comes to interviewing how do you create a basis of comparison? The metrics we used were their ability to hold composure and how much time it took to process the problem to come up with a potential solution. We found this worked well.

The second 20-minute chunk was an overview of our company. Consensys’ belief in self-organizing is foreign to a lot of people. No bosses, no managers. In many ways there is no one telling you what to do. We pride ourselves on creating a pipeline of work that is interesting and fulfilling. For our team, we needed to hire people who were do’ers. This lead to a conversation about the different potential areas of work. At Consensys, the three main areas for facilitation were product work with our startups, external consulting with our solutions teams and evolving traditional internal operations. During this time we reassured the candidate there were no right answers. The core principles of self-organizing revolve around personal development and growth. Our goal as interviewers was to understand what the person wanted to do and how they planned to grow. Why were they attracted to one thing over another? What did they want to stay away from and could we accommodate that request? This is where we got to know our candidates as humans.

The last 20 minutes of the interview was for questions. I consistently told candidates, “I am painfully honest and will answer anything that I’m legally allowed to talk about.” I love this part of the interview. During this section, we got everything from, “how much money do you make?” to “how much do I need to know about blockchain?” The important part for Eric and I was to remain honest and to be forthcoming about challenges. We wanted to make sure our candidates understood what they were getting into. We did not want to share the sugar-coated, shiny parts of the company. The work we are trying to do was hard and we needed to make sure we were transparent about this.

Hypothesis Four — There Are Not Many Like Us

If you recall, we had 82 applicants from our first round. Of those 82, 18 people got one-hour Zoom calls. Of those 18, three people got asked to the final stage of the interviews. Vetting is one of the hardest parts about interviewing. Trying to make a long-term decision based on a handful of interactions requires reflection. Eric and I held ourselves to a strict, 5 out of 5-star mentality for passing to the next round. In every capacity from culture to facilitation ability, we needed to be confident in our decisions to bring on new teammates. Every hire we brought on was going to have complete trust. Trust to lead, facilitate and grow the design thinking practice at Consensys. By using a 5/5 mentality it removed any doubt we had about our future peers.

The last part of our interview process was a one and a half hour remote workshop. Roughly two weeks before the workshop, the candidate received a problem statement. We tried our best to build these prompts off of our experiences at Consensys. Our goal here was for them to get as real of a taste of the kind of work we were actively doing. During the planning time, Eric or I would act as a sponsor. While candidates established goals and planned, we tried our best to answer any questions without being leading. This proved to be good cadence and most questions were around the logistics of remote facilitation.

To make the workshop feel real, we reached out around the company and asked people to volunteer. We sought out people from other disciplines to join us as participants. We wanted to make sure we checked our bias around the relationships we had built with the candidates. We ended up with 6–7 participants from places like HR, marketing, engineering and product design.

To end each workshop, we took an opportunity to retro. Eric or I would facilitate the last 30 minutes to talk about what worked and where improvement could happen. It was also an opportunity for the candidate to share their feedback on the interview process.

Hypothesis Five — Salary Negotiation is a Lose, Lose

The last and most stressful part of the redesigned interview process was the salary negotiations. For full transparency, we have only hired two people since building this process. The first person we hired went through a very standard salary negotiation. She received an offer, went back and forth with HR and ultimately came to a compromise about her salary. The second hire, we opted to try and run a different style of salary workshop. We wanted to make it less of a negotiation and more of a discussion.

Before the workshop, we sent our potential hire a salary which we thought was appropriate for the role. She communicated before our meeting that she was asking for almost 50% higher. Woah. Seeing as this was outside of our budget, we would take this workshop as an opportunity to experiment with self-organizing principles when deciding on a salary.

We designed a 1-hour mural session that went through three major activities.

1. Overview of comparable salaries and roles definitions.

When deciding the pay for a role, it’s easy to use comparables. Many of us go into Glassdoor or Paysa, type in a role and grab the first few numbers we see. The realization that we made during this process was that our role was not yet well defined. We could not find 1:1 comparables so we instead had to gather data from other role functions. What the research lead us to was a huge range for pay. We spent time during this workshop with our candidate going through what we believed the job responsibilities were at every pay increment. This process allowed her to see how we came to our initial offer. It also created a conversation about how we were currently working and how we could grow with her addition to the team.

2. The roles of the job and opportunities to grow

In that same vein, we wanted to make sure that every person who joined our team was given room to grow. Using Mural we laid out a spectrum of responsibilities and gave the candidate an opportunity to read over and identify the areas that she found interesting. From there we were able to facilitate a conversation about how to gain more responsibilities within the company as well as grow in our careers at Consensys.

3. Six self-organizing questions about salary.

This by far was the most eye-opening activity. By going through the Hanno playbook for self-organizing companies, we were able to talk openly about why our candidate was advocating 50% more. Through this process, we found out how expensive it was to buy a home in her city. Hearing this from another person as opposed to a cost-of-living calculator was far more impactful and useful in the process. She told us about how as a freelancer she was charging a higher rate because this role was so needed in her city. During this conversation, we also got opportunities to ask her critical questions. We wanted to know about what her plans were to stay accountable seeing as we would be paying her a premium. Ultimately, we came to an agreement that made both sides happy and did not require emotional capital.

This process could have been very awkward but instead, it was honest. The idea of trying to justify and advocate for your salary is scary for both parties. What we found was it removed the anxiety of traditional negotiation and made the process more human. It was not perfect. We identified areas for improvement like the next time we run this workshop we will include our team’s salaries and show our responsibilities to better communicate what we do and how they will fit into our team. Every iteration we will try and make this process better and more human.

Conclusion

This process was hard and time-consuming. It took a lot of effort for Eric and me to think critically about the work we needed to do at Consensys. What roles did we need to build a design thinking practice? Who might those people be? We spent a lot of time revisiting our artifacts. We looked at what types of hires we needed as the company changed and evolved. While it did take effort, it was worth every moment. To have great teammates join who align with the larger mission and understand what they can provide to the company is invaluable. I cannot recommend enough taking a hard look at your recruiting and interview process and exploring how you can make it more human by using self-organizing principles.

Naveen Raja is a design thinking & strategy facilitator. His passion for design has allowed him to vision, scope and scale design facilitation programs for companies both large and small. Through helping various teams at IBM, Fidelity Investments, Citibank, Marriott Hotels and more he is perfecting his recipe for how to help people to achieve more by using design. He is passionate about how people, places and cultures intermix and the significance it can play on creating an experience. You can find more at Educate and Iterate, a design thinking resources website.

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If you were to ask the question in my studio, “What should I learn to become a good designer?” You would receive hundreds of different answers. It is one of the reasons I love design, it has no set path. Recently I have been thinking a lot about my formal education. I wanted to take a moment and look back at what affected my practice today the most. What I found was the best classes I took in college were in not part of the design program’s curriculum. As a design student, I took design-specific classes to meet the degree requirements. This included sketching, model making studios, printmaking, art history, and classes on CAD. To my university, this curriculum was what design students needed as a foundation. To their credit, these classes provided a sound fundamental base of design. This said, fundamentals will only get you so far. For every designer, there is great value in supplementing the hard skills of design with other classes and coursework. If you are a design student out there, below are five courses I would recommend to any design student.

1. Intro to Public Speaking

A soft skill that every designer should build is the ability to public speak. The first time I took a public speaking class was the summer of 4th grade. To this day, I still recall tips and tricks around how to breathe and keep my eyes up. It has helped my career in ways I never would have imagined. This skill set is imperative for students because design is on the rise. In every company that sees the value of design, there will still be naysayers. As a designer you will have to give loads of presentations. There will be constant instances of defending your reasoning. You will receive hundreds of questions about your process and outcomes. The basic ability to publicly speak is powerful. From a pitch for clients to portfolio reviews, learn public speaking skills sooner rather than later. For design students, take an introductory public speaking or debate class. If you’re an adult reading this, consider joining Toastmasters.

2. A Class on Creative Writing

Many influential designers that I look up to are also phenomenal writers. Far-reaching and impactful design finds roots in storytelling. Many of the delightful user experiences in the world have ties to a great story. Airbnb does a beautiful job of showing how you get connected to the local scene by using their service. That story, the experience they communicate to you, is brilliant. So how can you as a design student learn to harness the power of storytelling? Take a course on creative writing or journalism. Like public speaking, taking a writing class teaches you how to create powerful stories, draft a narrative, and understand your audience. Design is a method of communication and writing is a medium that should not go unturned. For all those times you have to draft presentations or write up some copy, this will definitely help.

3. Intro to Business / Accounting

Design as a profession is moving toward either in-house or freelance/contract work. With this shift, having a basic understanding of how to build and run a business will set you up for success. By taking a business class you begin to understand the drivers for an enterprise. At IBM, everything I do boils down to a business case. Being able to articulate what the realistic cost of a design decision is and it’s potential return helps in evangelizing for design. Learning how to use the right business language has paid off both literally and figuratively. Not planning on working for a large organization? Then I would place even more stress that you learn about business. If you have any intention of ever taking on freelance work, take a basic accounting class. Self-employment taxes are a pain and it’s even harder if you do not know how to keep books. Learn early how to do things like track financial records in excel or draft up an invoice of billable hours. As you collect more freelance work, this will save you thousands of dollars. I swear, it will make your life easier in the long run.

4. A Class on Education

One of my favorite classes I took in college was “Physics 123 Made Easy.” The majority of students in this course were studying elementary education. While I thought it was going to be a blow-off, in reality it was an amazing lecture which taught me a lot about people. In this class we had to learn how to communicate complex ideas to children. We learned how to control the room and keep people engaged. One important skill set I have as a facilitator of design thinking is to understand how people learn. During my workshops, I constantly change the experience to match the needs of my participants. Taking a class related to educational principles paid off in the design world.

5. A Class to build Empathy

The absolute most important soft-skill to learn in design is empathy. For me, it was taking a phenomenal class at UIUC called “Subsistence Marketplaces.” For one year this class focused on building empathy for Indians who lived in extreme poverty. From case studies and role playing activities to Skype sessions with Indian villagers, we used a variety of methods to build empathy for our users. To build our understanding more, we embarked on a one month immersion trip to India. The intention of these research methods was to build a deep understanding for our users. A class like this teaches how to design for someone who is not exactly like you. Try and find an opportunity that takes you out of your comfort zone. Maybe you take a class around accessibility for disabled students on your campus or you explore an urban planning course to understand the needs of low income cities. Whatever it is, go the extra mile and learn how to build an understanding for other humans by using design.

Conclusion

One of the reasons why I love this field is due to the fact that it is inclusive. The modern designer is a melting pot of careers and backgrounds. Rounding out a designer’s hard skills requires a breadth of knowledge and understanding. Regardless if you are in school formally or not, explore other non-design related courses. Take the experiences from these classes and begin to leverage them in your design career. By exploring the world and learning, we can truly begin to understand how design can make a larger scaled impact.

Naveen Raja is the head writer for Educate and Iterate, a design thinking resources website. His passion for design has allowed him to vision, scope and scale design facilitation programs for companies both large and small. Through helping various teams at IBM, Fidelity Investments, Citibank, Marriott Hotels and more he is perfecting his recipe for how to help people to achieve more by using design. He is passionate about how people, places and cultures intermix and the significance it can play on creating an experience.

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The experience was terrifying but I saw and learned a lot which made me want to share. Below are a handful of my insights. From my observations you can avoid some of the mistakes that I made off the bat when leading executives.

Preparing did not really help

I am the first person to champion preparation. Ironing out a lot of workshops mistakes comes with proper prep work. Many issues around alignment and direction can all be had ahead of time. When your workshop starts, you should be able to hit the ground running. In this instance, that was not the case. This was the first time I was running a purely strategy workshop. The desired outcomes from this session was a field of dreams which was hard to prepare for. It’s roots were in convergence and divergence. A process that requires time over anything.

As a facilitator my lack of preparation was unsettling. The reality of the situation was I had to understand what a good outcome was for my executive team. I had to mold the activities and principles of design thinking to work as a catalyst for that change. We made up some activities on the spot, some worked, some did not work at all. It was uncomfortable. To be honest it was hard to get into the proper mindset to facilitate. I had to lean on the experiences from of running different types of workshops. In the beginning I wanted to know exactly how to the lead the group. In reality, I needed to be confident in my knowledge of design thinking and collaboration which ultimately would the enabling skill set.

Smart people love to talk

I believe that while working at IBM, I have been around some of the smartest people in the world. The people in this one workshop had literally built and shaped the IT security industry as we know it. In my experiences with wickedly smart people, they generally love to talk. They love to get into crazy detailed conversations about capabilities and their expertise. They love to bring up the experiences they’ve had and the lessons they’ve learned. In many ways it is a great thing. As a facilitator of a session filled with 11 of the brightest minds in the industry, I got lost… a lot and that was scary.

Generally in design thinking, time is not on your side. Given the short time frame, my co-facilitator and I had to make snap decisions. One hard decision we kept having to make was whether a conversation was beneficial or not. During workshops it’s easy for participants to get into the weeds. So how do you move past that situation? A technique I use is to ask, “Hey [group / person] is this a good conversation that will need about five more minutes or should we table this for later?” What this does is makes your participant(s) reflect and use their judgment to decide if yes, this is good for the group or no let’s move on. In my experiences, 95% of the time, it’s the latter.

The power of why?

A lot of times when I facilitate a session my domain knowledge is pretty high level. For some the idea of being in charge of leading a bunch of subject matter experts might be scary but I celebrate it. In this workshop, I had little domain knowledge which made it very hard to contribute. My participants had more experience than my lifetime. So what did I do? I listened. I listened a lot and took notes. I jotted down insights and then quickly would cluster them which lead to more questions. From this cycle I was able to understand the problems that existed in the space. I then collaborated with my co-facilitator on activities that would help us reach our desired outcomes. It was exhausting but it worked.

One powerful way to accelerate this process is to use a technique made famous by Sakichi Toyoda founder of Toyota Motor Company. Commonly known as “The 5 whys?” this method focuses on asking someone the question “why?” over and over again to get to the root cause of the problem. I have found that in facilitation this is a great way to get people out of weeds. It was awesome to actually see my VP help some of the engineers in the room be able to drill down their concerns using this method. When the conversation becomes too granular about abilities or technical specifications, start to ask “why?”.

Trust the process

In the end despite all the hiccups, it all worked out. My execs got their field of dreams and I saw once again that design thinking can be powerful regardless of discipline. The process of design thinking is adaptable. It’s use or application as a tool will help you but by no means is it magic. Going through the activities can be stressful. Getting your participants to stay on track and out of the weeds is hard. That aside, every workshop I’ve ran has been successful because the process just works. You don’t know when it will happen but in a workshop something clicks and it all comes together. The work we did in that one and half days probably took years off my life but if you asked me would I do it again? A million times yes.

Naveen Raja is the head writer for Educate and Iterate, a design thinking resources website. His passion for design has allowed him to vision, scope and scale design facilitation programs for companies both large and small. Through helping various teams at IBM, Fidelity Investments, Citibank, Marriott Hotels and more he is perfecting his recipe for how to help people to achieve more by using design. He is passionate about how people, places and cultures intermix and the significance it can play on creating an experience.

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As the Design Practice Lead for IBM Security, I get the opportunity to work with a lot of product teams and clients. Our practices program focuses on applying design thinking at scale, regardless of discipline. For a lot of the teams I work with this means design thinking workshops. Over three days we solve some of their hardest problems using facilitated design activities. As we wrap up the end of a workshop participants are always curious as how to continue on with the momentum. The problem for many members of my company is that their teams are rarely in the same location. This makes collaboration difficult but not impossible.

Design thinking at it’s core focuses around getting a group of people to build empathy for a user. From this deeper user understanding we create solutions which solve real problems. That is it. At IBM Design we emphasize three components of design thinking: users, hills and playbacks. Hills are the one big goal that the team is working toward. Playbacks are the term we use to describe a user oriented presentation for alignment.

The most common misconception about design thinking workshops is the cost. To say that they are expensive or a massive investment because you must get everyone together in the same space is bullshit. We need to change the perception of what it means to get people in the same room working toward a common problem.

I want to highlight two common problems/questions I get as a facilitator. I also want to showcase some “hacky” solutions found in our studio which allow us to better communicate with our teams both near and far.

1. “One or two key stakeholders live in a different country, state or time zone. How involved can they be in the workshop?”

Stakeholders regardless of location can be as involved as the team sees fit. How? By using video chat creatively. Do you own a smartphone or a tablet? If you own either then you have a small device with a front facing camera. This device allows you to see your stakeholders and for your stakeholders to see you. It enables them to be active contributors but let’s be realistic, no one wants to hold a phone for hours on end. Not a problem. In our studio someone took the liberty of building this.

That contraption is a store bought IV pole with an Ipad case drilled into it. This device paired with a charger and extension cord could allow anyone regardless of location to be contribute and move with the group actively in a mostly in person session. Total cost to build? $45.

Active collaboration is not always the right solution. Sometimes you want to be able to document or live broadcast the session to other offices. Once again, not a problem. An iPhone mount paired with a tripod allows you to create an affordable tool to share information.

Total cost? $32.

Add in a slack channel or chat room allowing for comments/questions and you’ve created a feedback system. Both methods active or passive could be a low cost way to get teams to collaborate together regardless of distance.

2. “My whole team is remote, I want to run a workshop but how can I do this?”

As technology becomes a more remote as an industry, the reality that no one is co-located is very real.

For the past few months I have researched better methods to run workshops online. The first thing that sets a team up to host a good session comes from having a plan. Going into a workshop with the mindset of running it like a meeting is setting yourself up for failure. Why? A meeting is where one person talks the whole time and everyone nods along because they feel that they can’t speak. Design thinking is about collaboration. You have to plan the workshop with the expectation that everyone is going to talk and take part. If that expectation is not set from the first moment you will never reach impactful outcomes. Establish that the team is going to build for a user then use design thinking to solve for their problems. This is crucial.

In my daily workflow there is a good amount of remote interactions. At a minimum, I use video calling as a method to engage participants during our sessions.

As of Jan, 2017, I think the best combination is video chatting and some sort of online whiteboard. My favorite combination right now is Zoom video sharing paired with Mural.ly. Zoom is a great video chatting service that allows groups of people to chat easily as well as share screens. Mural.ly is an online whiteboard space that allows you to layout design thinking activities ahead of time. Having a designated facilitator helps vastly in online workshops. Go in with a plan, remind your team this is about the user not about other agendas and you will be in good shape.

Final Thoughts

When it comes to design thinking the best advice is, take the plunge and do it. Good outcomes from design thinking come from continual repetition. Through repetition you build an understanding of what parts of the process are important to your work. There is no magic recipe. There is not a secret ingredient that exists which will allow design thinking to happen. Take the risk, make mistakes and make the framework your own.

Naveen Raja is the head writer for Educate and Iterate, a design thinking resources website. His passion for design has allowed him to vision, scope and scale design facilitation programs for companies both large and small. Through helping various teams at IBM, Fidelity Investments, Citibank, Marriott Hotels and more he is perfecting his recipe for how to help people to achieve more by using design. He is passionate about how people, places and cultures intermix and the significance it can play on creating an experience.

Please heart & share this article! Please voice your questions, comments or concerns below!

Two years ago when my brother and I asked my mom what she wanted for her 56th birthday she said, “The new iPhone”. It was surprising because my mom had always been pretty technology averse. Since 2007, she had been using the same basic cell phone. We tried to talk her out of it, but she insisted that all of her friends had smartphones and she wanted one, too. Fair enough.

The initial learning curve for her was not as painful as we anticipated. After about two weeks of using the phone she had already downloaded apps. She had become prolific with selfies and even got a new Gmail account, all by herself. To be honest, I was impressed. The same woman that used to get mad at a universal remote was now going along for the ride with the tech trends. Righteous.

Fast forward to today. My mom is a cell phone addict. In her later fifties she cannot be more than 10 feet away from her phone. Any notification sound that occurs, she must address it at once. She is now connected instantly with her friends from all over the world. She is always on Whatsapp and I ask her, “Who are you talking to?” Replies vary, from friends in Illinois all the way to old classmates in Mumbai, India. For the first time in her life she has true instant access to all the information she could ever want and she loves it. It has even gotten to the point where, as her child, I have to ask her to put down her phone and talk in person.

So why is this important for design?

If you follow the news, it is not uncommon to hear how millennials are technology obsessed. Articles flood the internet on how hard it is for us to disconnect. Design should have a focus around meaningful interactions where technology is just the platform for communication. Along with that, design, in my eyes, is about understanding the future. Our future is not just young, it is older generations who are becoming more technology-savvy. Don’t believe me? Go to your Facebook and scroll your feed. If you are friends with your parents or anyone above the age of 40, they probably are the most prolific posters. I have woken up to notifications from my mother at five and six in the morning saying, “Hey did you see this cool…”. I do not think I am alone in this.

The older generations are living longer. As more and more people start to wind down from their careers, the amount of free time they have increases. The internet, social media and technology are connections to a greater source of information. As designers we have to acknowledge this reality. We have to start to become more conscious of how our decisions might influence this large group of users.

Three areas that I have thought about could help bring accessibility for baby boomers…

1. Low vision / Vision impairment

According to the vision council of America, about 60% of Americans are far-sighted. A majority of those adults use reading glasses or bifocals. It is almost 2017. Our technology should adapt to user needs. All digital products should have a simple and dynamic way to adjust type face, weight and size. In the future I hope products are “smart” and understand, given a user’s age, what their vision needs might be.

Adapting screen color modes on devices, applications and browsers could also have impact. Changes like this allow for increased readability for all, allowing us to design for 99% of our users.

2. Adapting interaction

Many designers would agree that interaction design is where our industry is moving.

One thing recently that has stood out to me is Apple’s 3D touch. It provides a huge opportunity for the future of UI/UX. The potential for quick access and drilling into different parts of an application is brilliant. With that being said, imagine if you have arthritis?

Arthritic hands generally have painful difficulty in targeting and clicking on icons. Then, to get access to the added features, you would have to apply even more force! Ouch. Maybe a solution is to use voice to allow users to create application shortcuts? Maybe it is something completely different? As designers we can should seek out these difficulties. We should push for all people to enjoy these functionalities, regardless of age.

3. Conscious ergonomics

The original focus of ergonomics was the study of people’s efficiency in their working environment. Now days it has shifted to understanding how people interact with physical products.

As products become smaller and lighter the obsession is put on being compact. Looking around, I have that noticed that older people tend to have larger smart phones. Why? My assumption is that larger phones are easier to handle. The larger screen and button size allow for easier interaction. As motor skills might decrease in older age, a product like an iPhone 7+ offers more value than its smaller counterpart. I have even seen my mother use her iPad to click photos because the screen is easier for her to see.

Even wearable products like smart watches could have a huge potential for older users. When you factor in how bio-metric input feeds into a device, it could even save someone’s life! But, something as simple as a hard-to-open watch clasp could be the reason an older user does not adopt a great piece of technology.

Yes and?

I wrote this article to start a conversation around designing for an older generation. At my current job, we talk a lot about accessibility, but our focus is on enterprise software. How can the design of everyday tools like smart phones and consumer applications affect our mothers and fathers? How can we understand their needs and design with empathy? How can we ensure that someday when we reach their age, products are not just designed for a younger generation?

Naveen Raja is the head writer for Educate and Iterate, a design thinking resources website. His passion for design has allowed him to vision, scope and scale design facilitation programs for companies both large and small. Through helping various teams at IBM, Fidelity Investments, Citibank, Marriott Hotels and more he is perfecting his recipe for how to help people to achieve more by using design. He is passionate about how people, places and cultures intermix and the significance it can play on creating an experience.

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