design matters. Design for outcomes rather than output

Too often, design is seen as an aesthetic output, to be evaluated through the personal like/dislike lens or taken to consumer research for their like/dislike judgment. It is output, based on the inputs of research and analysis, and is a logical progression of the same.

A lot of innovations in India tend to be design output. In a country with 300 days of sunshine, the solar cooker should have been a no-brainer.

But its adoption remained poor 30 years ago, and has been all but forgotten today. The output-based approach created a box that needed to be placed on terraces or balconies and needed stepping away from the kitchen and disrupting the normal cooking process. An outcome-based approach would have created adoption through a seamless use of utensils in cooking — and an aspirational quotient that modern kitchens signify.

Similarly, while creating a vitamin water for Nourishco (a Tata, PepsiCo joint venture), an output-based approach would have taken us to codes of vitamins and energy on the bottle label design.

The outcome-based approach, on the other hand, told us that in India water purifies. Our belief in water is such that even a dirty mop going around a floor is supposed to have cleaned, as has a grimy wet cloth wiping a table top, simply because it has used water.

If water cleanses, then how can it be believable to be depositing vitamins?

The outcome-based approach led us to understanding a deeply cultural belief of the potency of water when placed in a copper vessel. The vitamin water contained copper and thus we built the idea of the water on the copper ingredient, leading to market impact.

Outcome-based approaches shape behaviour and drive belief. I come across too many start-ups that have determined what they will sell but have not answered the question: Why will someone buy? This is the question to answer to get a desired outcome.

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