VINOD K MEENA
ENTREPRENEUR | ENGINEER | DESIGNER
10th Boulevard - Design & Innovation Consulting
Rachna Valley Design Group - Service Systems Design Director
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Indian School of Business - Finance & Marketing
Indian Institutes Of Technology - Civil & Structural Engineering
Industrial Design Center, IITB - Interaction Design & Photography
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OYO Hotels & Homes (India, Brazil) - Business Finance
Nomura Financial Advisory (India, Singapore) - Financial Products - Bonds, FX Options & Forwards
Deloitte (India) - ERP Implementations & Relational Databases
We live in a complex world where our lives are more deeply integrated than they have ever been in the known history of our existence.
I focus my efforts towards decoding these relationships in the context of design, innovation, business architecture, & finance.
I bring together my education, past working experiences, and current entrepreneurial endeavours along with my deep interest in design thinking and human centric approach to design to collaborate on developing solutions to complex real-world problems.
I connect with business leaders and educational institutions to share insights and collaborate on strategic projects beyond geographical boundaries.
Foundational Approach
Systems
I treat design as a design of systems. Before being categorised as a product or a service, anything that we design is a system in which various parts come together to get something done. It makes further sense to see products and services as working systems.
In my view an aircraft passenger seat is not a product, it is a working system designed for seating through the journey, safety while takeoff and touchdowns, resting arms, storing safety equipment and much more.
Similarly any service model can be treated as a working system that helps people get something done
Verb
It helps, to a great extent, to think of design in terms of verbs.
If we take every human action, mental or physical, and map these actions as set of activities that lead to the achievement of a goal, we can visualise the functionality of our designs better.
For example, assume that we are designing a pair of shoes that somebody is going to wear and go for a run. First, someone would want to put the shoes on. Someone would want the shoe to stay on the foot, which means that we will have to design a lace system or a velcro system. Then, when somebody wears it and runs with them, we're going to have to decide on the types of materials that the foot cushion is going to have. The activities of putting the shoe on, making them hold on the foot, running with them, and taking them off are a set of activities. If we add these activities together, they help us achieve the goal of going completing a run.
Enabler
Everyday people are trying to achieve some goals and in terms of Prof. Clayton Christensen, they are trying to 'get a job done.'
I see design as an enabler. A good design enables people to get things done and achieve the intended goal. Designed solutions are an extensions of human beings that provide them with leverage to get things done in a particular context.
A thoughtfully designed pencil is an enabler that lets people write on a surface with relative ease (compared to some to some other tool) , and so is a turning curve on a road enabling people to take a smooth curve at a particular speed.
Strategy
In principle, strategy building exercises are design exercises. In my experience it helps to see strategy as a system level exercise and design the parts and flow of actions and information in an intended manner to achieve the desired goal.
Design is a strategic approach to solving problem statements.
Decisions
In any design process, we divide our decisions into two primary categories. Design Decisions & Commercial Decisions.
Design Decisions are taken keeping in mind the end user of products and services. These are about the usability of the product, service flow, or space in the lives of people interacting with them.
Commercial Decisions (Financial Decisions) are taken to decide upon the inclusion and exclusion of the outcomes of the design decisions to achieve we want to achieve within the constrains of feasible budgets.
These two types of decision do not work in isolation but there is rarther a frequent back and forth between two types in terms of new information, feedbacks, and exploration of alternatives.
SELECT ARTICLES
Design Thinking