2 Min SKSM

Have you ever wondered what makes a product truly great? What is the secret behind the products that touch our hearts and souls? How can we design products that make a positive difference in the world? The answer is simple: design with higher purpose. Designing with higher purpose means creating products that serve a user's needs, goals, and aspirations. It means putting the user at the center of everything we do, not the technology, the platform, or the leadership team. Here is a story: Akbar, the Indian emperor who loved music, praised Tansen, his court musician "You are possibly the best singer with mesmerizing voice in the world. " Tansen with all humbleness and humility said "He will be pale in comparison to his Guru Swami Haridas". So, Akbar desired to hear him sing and went with Tansen in disguise. They found Swami Haridas meditating under a tree in Vrindavan. Swami Haridas sang a hymn in praise of God. His music was divine and enchanting. Akbar felt a wa

What if I told you that artificial intelligence (AI) is smarter, faster and more powerful than you? And that it can read and write anything on the internet better than you? And that it can solve any problem that you can’t? Don’t worry, this is not a sci-fi movie plot. This is the point of singularity, a hypothetical situation where AI becomes self-aware, self-improving and unstoppable. Some nerds say that it will happen by the middle of this century, but others say that it is already happening with the rise of natural language processing (NLP) and large language models (LLMs) such as Chat GPT. These models are like super-readers and super-writers. They can devour billions of words from books, articles, social media posts, etc. and spit out texts that are coherent and fluent on any topic. They can also answer questions, summarize information, and create original content such as poems, stories, code, etc. Anyone can access these models for a cheap price thanks to the cloud computing ser

  70% reduction in face-to-face interaction when firms switched to open office - as per an article published in HBR . Just like actors or basket ball players try to isolate from chaos and distractions to focus on scene or game, employees also tend to create invisible walls to maintain privacy and focus on work. it's called fourth wall. So open offices are possibly not so open.  Surprisingly, new age companies are still in favor of open spaces which can supposedly increase collaboration and happiness among employees. But personally I have never found any employee happy about open offices except for those who suggested the change. Somehow, this employee friendly decision, always, came top-down. Isn't it demeaning or condescending? As if the management does not have faith on employees to collaborate, suo-moto; and so the employees have to be conditioned in an enforced surrounding. Theoretically, open office architecture compromises privacy for collaboration and vice versa for the

I lived a bucolic life thanks to my papa's job in forest department. I lived in a fairy world for today's generation watching stars and running behind helicopter damselfly. I wanted my kid to experience these but they are lost in today's concrete jungle and materialistic life. They only live in books, stories and rhymes. Why? I thought pollution, specifically air pollution, led to this problem cutting us from the universe. But no, it is a different kind of pollution that I was not aware of till yesterday - Light pollution . As we light our nights with bright lights, we lose our stars from our sights.  Lamps that throw light upward gets reflected from cloud & air making the sky brighter and so we cannot see stars. We need to use better lamps.   Light also has adverse effect on insects. Insects lose track of time (day and night). There was a study comparing caterpillars in two different areas: one lighted with street lamps and one not lighted. It was found that in the ear

The effect of Feminism (equal right to women) on the structure in society and the role & responsibility in family is immense. In the modern era, society is having more and more families with working wives thanks to the acceptance of women's economic right.  The social trend has changed and so the groom's preference in marriage over time; from house wife, to educated & home maker and now to educated, working & financially independent partner. However, in this new relationship, who is "making home" is not explicitly called out. of course, it is obvious, isn't it? This is how the patriarchal notion is silently using "Feminism".   A family nucleus is the smallest organization which can then be combined to get a society. So I believe, the changes we want at a society level, must be achieved at this nucleus level. The family has to perform many tasks to survive as shown below. Since in a patriarchy, Man is the provider managing Finance, he has more

Warning, you may find this topic offensive! In many Indian cities, I have observed posters printed on flimsy colored paper talking about "Sex problem" using English and local language in narrow, stinky and unlike places.  This weekend, I ponder on this. You will be surprised how effective, strategic and technically sound this communication channel is even though the product is shoddy.  It is likely that these local clinics are far from "genuine" clinics run by quacks exploiting public fears and shame among conservative not-so-educated people and guarantying success using "Ayurveda". This is because normal rules do not apply here: "Section 33EEC of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act of 1940 Provided that nothing in this section shall apply to Vaidya and Hakims who manufacture Ayurvedic, Sidhha or Unani drug for the use of their own patient : " Key things to note about this "Company": discrete, Legal but not legal, Fear, Conservative. and the po

Who will not like to see Autonomous, Intelligent car in a movie? And if it becomes a reality? won't it be so cool, right? It's a dream, figment of imagination and amazement of a child. And a project of amusement for many. I wonder, what is the need and business case behind spending so much to achieve a fully automated car. Is it to create a sequel of "Total Recall" without using animation or to achieve a personal goal like "blue moon".  Safety Tesla, Waymo and many have stated safety as the objective behind AV project. Well, 97% of road accidents are attributed to human error! So humans have to be replaced with AI. But why don't we spend in human? In the end you can get same result by spending in either Tech or Human.  Then why are tech companies spending so much in Technology? Because spending in Y axis makes them "high" and "kool"; that is why the axis is titled "K". Making Money In Elon Musk's words "Enable your

New Consumer applications have taken the human centric design and simplified UX to such a great height that its influence on Enterprise application is inevitable. But are Consumer applications and Enterprise applications comparable in terms of its users and complexities? When I see enterprise applications (like SAP, Oracle, even Salesforce), I see this  Now in the name of simplicity, it will be foolish to expect this in cockpit (within budget) Consumer Applications and Enterprise applications are different. A simplified and minimalistic App design may score high in Learnability ad Delightful but will be Useless and Ineffective for most of the advanced users. This is "TRAP OF SIMPLICITY".  There is also no second opinion that enterprise Apps are less human centric and look drab in the name of "Complexity" and "Flexibility". That is "EXCUSE OF COMPLEXITY".  The scope of improvement in Enterprise App UX is humongous but may lie in different directio

COVID may have brought the media industry to a point of no return. it gave individual and family enough time and environment to think and get conditioned; conditioned to get better entertainment. This condition does not bode well for Television industry.  Normally we will consider channel A as a competitor to channel B as both are competing for audience's hour which is a rival good i.e. if A consumes my watching hour then B cannot consume it. However, the audience watching hour itself is being targeted by On Demand Video , Gaming and Social media industry. The definition of pie itself is shrinking for TV industry.  Your next TV is a smart TV Just like the smart phone, the television is seeing unbelievable reduction in price and increase in smart features. It is a certainty the next television purchase will be a smart TV. Now, a Smart TV without internet is just a "Dabba" (a dumb box) and is not a good social status. This TV is going to complement On Demand Video industry

Long back in my college, I studied about LoC - not "Line of Control" but "Locus of Control". Locus of Control, introduced by Julian B. Rotter in 1954, explained the degree to which individuals attribute success or failure to themselves (internal LoC) or to others (external LoC).  It is also found that people with internal LoC are happier than people with external LoC. And I see many unhappy people in social media during this COVID period blaming others. Even I would like to do so but somehow I am not getting right premises. People will say there are many premises readily available: Premise 1: Indian Govt was not at all prepared for 2nd wave! Below graph shows daily COVID cases for different countries (source: worldometer ). Nobody expected such serious scene with such magnitude in India considering wave patterns, summer season and antibodies among people. But the reality was different from projection.  Was Govt. solely responsible for such stiff increase in cases? W

 Let's do an exercise which was given to us by our prof Saral M,  Statement 1: A system designed to  succeed , succeeds when it succeeds .   Statement 2: A system designed to fail ,___________ when it ___________. (now complete this before you scroll down). Are you thinking why the hell, a system will be designed to fail. Think about fuse box, circuit breaker or software tester.  ... ... (no cheating...fill the blanks) ... ... You will be in top 99% of population if your answer is   A system designed to fail, succeeds when it fails , or A system designed to fail, fails when it succeeds Very few, almost none will state "A system designed to fail, fails when it fails to fail . Right? We are schooled systematically to be successful; to such an extend that we cannot form a statement without using word "Success/ succeed". Human might be social, but it is designed to be competitive and be successful. What is a better place than Group meetings to be competitive.  Group m

Imagine a mall hosting 3.7lac sellers selling 20 Cr products.  Will it not look like a tropical jungle, so dense that anyone can be lost. This is Amazon.in, literally the Amazon forest in ecom industry. Designing Amazon.in in a way that user can easily maneuver and reach required lane of products can be a dream as well as a nightmare for the best of best Designers. But unfortunately, when I think of bad design, Amazon comes up in mind. Let's conduct an user journey of a buyer searching for Realme mobile phone. I am selecting Mobile phone, because 80% traffic in e-com takes this route and so at least this path should have been developed matured, right?  There are two users:  Amy, the browser. She does not like to ask help from anyone in mall and searches the product by strolling across lanes. Online, she takes her time to browse through the pages and find the the product.  Bill, the searcher: He asks for help as soon as he enters the mall, takes the directions and picks the right pr

Prisoner's dilemma framed in 1950 is such a powerful depiction of individual behavior that we need to revisit this again in today's digital era;  Digital era where new tech companies are disturbing Goliaths.  Before we discuss about this framework, I will like to introduce two terms: unstable/ stable equilibrium point using below drawing. Gravity ensures that any push from equilibrium point will  lead the ball to Stable equilibrium point.  In prisoner's dilemma, two prisoners can either cooperate with each other and get punitive punishment or defect keeping own interest in mind. This is classically known as non-zero-sum game where one's win does not mean another's loss.  Here the stable equilibrium point is where both defect because of self-interest and get moderate punishment.  In today's era, where startups and tech companies are disrupting the industry, the funding houses are investing in them assuming that they are going to unlock value and create new market

Bonsai is not merely an art form – it is a way of life; a way of thinking; a way of practicing patience. When I think of culture especially "Company culture", I see a Bonsai tree, a tree cultured for many years taking shape as visualized by the artist. When it goes through many hardship and care like pruning, trimming, clamping, and wiring for years, you see beauty in it like Wabi-Sabi. What is culture? It is a set of behaviors. If the behavior is not in-line then there will be consequences which then establish the expected behavior. This defines the culture. Culture is driven by the top management and not the values/ statements written over the pillars or walls. However once culture is set, the entire organization and its components i.e. employees behave in a way to keep the culture intact like a living entity. Organization is autopoietic i.e. has capability to self-produce itself irrespective of employees coming or leaving. The company culture is maintained like body temper

 "Loyalty" is such fuzzy word that everybody wants it but nobody knows the definition. After reading and introspection, I could conclude that when a person is presented with options, loyalty acts as a moral compass. Everyone takes decision based on logic and magic. Probably this magic is "Loyalty". This magic may come from a product, employer or your life partner! This magic is known as Brand.  In Economics, one of my favorite graph was indifference curve i.e. Consumer can select various quantity of Good A or Good B to get same level of satisfaction. Similar relationship can be explained  between level of Capital (Technology) and Labor to get constant level of output. So, I am coining a word iso-guilt curve. i.e. One balances between logic and magic to decide on options with same level of guilt.  In current capitalism era, the brand loyalty has become questionable. E.g. based on price discount (logic) one may select Flipkart or Amazon, Ola or Uber, Swiggy or Zomato.

What will it take to be successful in digitally transforming a company? Agile/ Lean management? No, it's Cheetah's philosophy and then Lean & Agile.   The main objective of digital transformation is to question legacy assumptions e.g. "do we need processes for expense claim at all?" rather "can process cost be decreased by 30%". The later is an example of incremental improvement and falls under Lean philosophy. Agile comes in to the picture when the final solution is being implemented by IT team.  My prof Mr. Saral M  once said "most of businesses fall in two categories: Elephant and Cheetah". Elephants are gigantic, conservative, cost conscious and utilization driven business houses. Cheetahs are flexible, change driven,  margin & customer conscious business houses.  Cheetah will have surplus of capacity (human/ physical resources) to capture new opportunities and to leverage sudden changes. Elephant will have resources 90+%  utilized and

Scope creep is seriously injurious to health of engineers, project managers and in the end customers. Apple phone is highly user friendly because the designer knew when to stop. Product exists because it does not exist outside of it. And this is the Yin-Yang moment.  You are defined by what you are not...Light exists because there is darkness...One is true because others are zeroes... Yang is there because yin exists outside of it... You have something everywhere. What defines an object is drawing a line stating outside of this is Nothing. That is why you have to reject hypothesis to prove something. As my professor once said "Strategy is the art of closing doors". He did not say opening doors but closing doors. The same philosophy applies to scope statement as well. Scope statement should clearly mention what not to do.  "We will implement mobile application to do xyz. However, iOS development is excluded in this phase." Now you decide which statement has given mor