Surprised? Well, let’s put on our imagination hats and imagine that such a role exists and you are playing it.

Let us start with a few rules/assumptions

1. Let us assume that you also have complete decision-making authority and that this power doesn’t corrupt you.

2. Do remember, however, that your customers (citizens of the country and other stakeholders) could still dislike what you design.

3. Assume that you cannot completely change all the “constraints” that are around you (example: social inequality is a reality, maybe your design thinking helps reduce this gap, but let’s not assume that it does not exist)

4. Let us also assume that we do not want customer acquisition but rather customer retention.

What would you do in such a role?

I asked this question on a couple of forums.

One thing common and evident in my research was to change the education system, better health care system, and have a seamless experience of getting government formalities done.

Obviously, the ask is huge!

For a country with such a diverse persona set, how would you decide which persona to focus on and what experiences to fix? Would you go with the low-hanging fruit or would you go for something that is higher impact but higher complexity?

Here are some of my previous attempts at low-hanging fruit — Currency redesign, License redesign

Here are a couple of other things that I would do.

We need design as a department at a central level to district or panchayat levels to build a design system. This subject is broader than I can think. However, to start with, let’s say most of the stuff that we need to get done today has a process to go through, my point is by unifying these experiences it will make it really easy for the citizens of India.

We need consistency to make the experience unique. Examples — Think of an experience where you need to learn/get familiarise yourself with one system/flow and this is going to be the same for all processes. You will feel like — you just need to login to a single place to do everything. Let it be your passport booking, license renewal, or land property registration. I know, diversity and consistency cannot go hand in hand. However I think, we can still bring consistency by keeping diversities as the foundation of the system

I conducted a poll on Instagram and some WhatsApp groups to understand what’s my non-designer friend’s perspective on having a design system. And the results didn’t surprise me.

This is me. There is no right or wrong answer when we are ideating.

But now we are thinking.

Visualize the problem, challenge common assumptions, reverse your thinking, empathize, embrace risk and failure. Make design thinking a part of day-to-day life.

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So the question remains!

What would you do?

I would like to hear your thoughts.

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