[Applause]
all right happy to be here
meaningful work is it important to do
meaningful work how can I do more
meaningful work how can I make my work
more meaningful what makes my work
meaningful I think these are some of the
questions that that I have lived with or
I grew up with rather right and that
really is the start of what I think of
my calling or my career and that’s
really designed so not so many years ago
I was I was an aspiring student like
many of you and I had to take a decision
about what I wanted to study and of
course I had engineering on top of my
mind because we have such great
technical institutes and everything was
going alright but I had to kind of ask
myself hey when I look at something is
how does this thing work is that right
the first question that comes to my mind
and if I honestly ask myself that the
answer was always not really you know I
think I care about what that thing means
to other people right so that was very
revealing for me I was interested in how
things work I think that’s very
important that’s a very important part
of what I do but at the same time a more
prominent question that I want to answer
or want an answer to is what does this
thing whatever it is what does it mean
right what does it mean to people what
has enable people to do and that really
that thinking was really something that
brought me closer to design I didn’t
think that I was going to be a designer
I took it off because of this question
this motivating question and I have to
say that it has been a revealing journey
from there in trying to understand how I
can create meaning through my work so
today I’m going to share with
you my P principal the only tree how I
try to make my more work more meaningful
and I think they I hope they can apply
to many of you in making your work more
meaningful so first one I want to talk
about is the idea of focusing on value
for this one I have a story about music
I’m a musician I perform professionally
in India and cities I used to have a
band in college and as a as someone who
loves music and I’m sure many of you do
as well you would agree with me that
music has benefits much beyond just
entertainment if you’re a musician it’s
a great way to to build your creativity
it’s a great way to be stress distract
yourself it’s a great way to seriously
pursue an art and it’s a great social
enabler and a social connector and I’m
fascinated by music and at some point in
my in my life I got interested in
children with cerebral palsy so for
those of you who you don’t who don’t
know what it is it’s a condition where
part one half of your body basically is
paralyzed fully or partially right
and I contrasted in these children and
the way they live their lives and I saw
in front of me kids who were isolated
from normal society because of their
functional limitations and who could not
participate to their fullest in in
society and I was I thought hey you know
I I love music music has done so many
things for me in these directions why
why don’t I think of some way of of
giving these kids or making music taking
music closer to these kids so I spent a
lot of time with them and what I
realized was yes
long these kids were actually very
interested in music and they were being
exposed to a lot of music but if you
look at an instrument if you look at a
traditional instrument what is the
traditional instrument about when I
think of an instrument like a guitar I
learned to play the guitar I had to
spend like two years before I could play
one song right I had to spend that time
to play a song had to learn the
instrument first and then play a little
more and find my friends and so forth
and learn to play in a group and then we
could actually play some songs and
that’s when I got started getting the
fulfillment of having made music
together right and a lot of the
instruments that were around are
essentially built for this and the
values that you associate with
instruments is one of virtuosity of
mastery of you know relentless practice
of meditative States and so forth and
that’s all great but well when I looked
at these kids
and I asked the question okay but what
is the value of instruments for them I
were a completely different answer these
kids were not interested in becoming
virtuoso musicians right for them music
was a way to have fun to communicate to
connect with each other and to distract
themselves and enable themselves to
participate more fully in society that’s
the value of a musical instrument and
then the question I had was how might we
design such a musical instrument that
can serve this purpose for these kids
and this was the result I have a small
video that shows what the kids were able
to do with it
[Music]
I’m sorry
[Music]
[Music]
you
I was able to take those and think of a
new way of making music accessible to
thee do that in a way that added value
to their lives
and that made the work more meaningful
to me the next principle I want to share
is making it effortless I had an
opportunity to work with with a family
physician on making the healthcare
experience better for patients and it
started with a similar kind of
exploration into what is the value that
people are looking for when it comes to
their health or the health care
experience and the answer was quite
simple people want to get better people
go to a doctor to get better but if you
look at Family Physicians today and the
way they need to operate today we
studied family physicians and we found
that you know they were looking at
hundreds of patients every day sitting
in a cubby hole on the street somewhere
and with hundreds of patients a day all
you can do basically is just take a look
at the face ask them what’s the problem
and hand him some pills and say bye-bye
that’s it that’s the quality of the
interaction that a family physician
unfortunately that’s the time that he
gets on the opportunity that he gets to
interact with the patients right but
what if we changed us around and said
okay what’s really valuable for people
is to get better and getting better
involves so many more things it’s not
just about getting the right pills it’s
about getting the right advice it’s
about getting the right medication that
suits your body and your history so it’s
about sharing all these things as well
it’s also about making sure that the
prescriptions or the treatment has
worked what is the status of that what
additional enablement is required in
terms of you know for many an illness is
a family affair if the person who’s
earning fall sick the entire family
effective how can we help people deal
with that and that is all this is a part
of the experience of getting better
that’s the value so that’s so we’ve we
honored so many kinds of things and of
course the solution involved you know
changing the way doctors relate to
patients by giving them access or giving
them the tools to engage with patients
throughout this journey around these
broader needs but in doing that so we we
follow the first principle like we found
where the value was and we tried we
created something that could fill that
gap but what we found was that no matter
how good a solution you make right you
have to look at the reality of the
doctor which is like it’s he still sees
100 patients a day he doesn’t have time
to learn a new system and to integrate
that a part and make it a part of his
you know practice if that system does
not work in the framework or the
constraints that he has in the way he
works and if you look at so we looked at
like currently available systems and
they were very complicated they are all
designed for heavy record-keeping your
electronic health records mainly coming
from the insurance industry and so forth
where everything is required to be noted
down and all that goes into a case
history and that can be used in a legal
kind of framework or a setting and we
said hey you know for the purpose that
we have we don’t need to make things so
complicated what we want is a very
simple system that doctors can use to
have this kind of relationship with
their patients
yet which would fit in their current
book and that led to developing a system
that the doctor could use in twenty
seconds or less that was our goal and to
enable this kind of relationship and
that’s this small clip where you see an
actual doctor using the system
[Music]
so in 20 seconds so no complicated EHRs
no complicated devices everything on a
tablet in 20 seconds – to enable you to
give the value or the experience that
your patients want to get better so
that’s really my second principle it’s
not enough to find the value in design
for it you have to make it effortless
for people to be able to adopt it and
that increases the meaning of my work by
getting it in the hands of the people
that are going to use it
the third principle that I want to share
which I learned later in my career is
about creating a hook some years before
I had the opportunity to lead a
postgraduate program in design for
entrepreneurs the idea was that a lot of
students today would like to start their
own businesses because that has become a
viable option as a career option and the
law of creative students or creative
individuals actually see that as their
favorable or favored career choice so
why don’t we have a postgraduate program
that gives students the knowledge and
the means for them to do this and as the
director of the program I had the
opportunity to design the whole
curriculum and the way it was going to
be delivered and so forth so I used my
principle one which was find out where
the value is and the value is really
about helping creative people start
businesses or get independent in that
sense in a career sense and the way to
make it simple is to make it very
practical and non textbook II and have a
lot of projects and hands on work to
reinforce the right behaviors and to
enable experience based learning or
reflective learning this is a program
that was meant for non designers because
creative people are everywhere and
everybody could potentially start a
business but when we launched the
program
or the way we spoken about spoke about
it we we targeted it at creative
entrepreneurs and the first year we got
like three students in the second year
we got five I said hey there’s a problem
we’ve applied the right principles we
found out that there’s value in this
it’s actually leading to leading people
to a place where they want to be which
is like the independent creatively and
have a business and it’s also we’ve
architected and designed it in a way
that makes it easy for people with no
background in design to consume it and
to learn what they need to learn but we
are not seeing the right kind of
engagement we’re not seeing the right
kind of adoption and the lesson there
was so what we did was we we changed
that or rather the turning point for us
was to realize it may be creative
entrepreneurship or becoming
entrepreneurs is an end goal and in
itself it’s a very challenging goal and
most people most students see that as
something difficult that can be only
achieved after a while it takes
investment from them to come to the
level that they’re comfortable with
saying that hey I can be an entrepreneur
what we realized was that there were a
whole lot of people or students who just
wanted to be more creative in whatever
they were doing and that’s a very
different thing and a very easy thing to
get started with and if you compare it
with directly saying that hey I want to
be a creative entrepreneur so with that
in sight we read we reframe the program
saying hey this is not a program for
creative entrepreneurs per se but it’s a
program for anybody from any background
who wants to get wants to be more
creative in the approach that they have
towards their work so we reframed it
like that and suddenly the program
strength went from four to thirty the
next year everything was the same
the value created was the same we were
still making people creatively
independent we were still delivering the
program in an easy practical
experience based learning framework the
only thing we changed was that we
created a hook that allowed people to
make it a part of their lives faster
remove that friction as well so though
those were my three principles of making
the meaning of my work stronger making
my work more meaningful if I have to sum
it up I think the most meaning that I
get from my work is when my work goes
out and gets used by others for whatever
purpose it was designed for so for me I
see my work as something that is always
at the service of a higher purpose and a
purpose that is defined by somebody else
so that’s it for my work that’s how I
find meaning in my work and I make my
work more meaningful I hope this is
something you can take away and apply it
to you thank you
[Applause]
all right happy to be here
meaningful work is it important to do
meaningful work how can I do more
meaningful work how can I make my work
more meaningful what makes my work
meaningful I think these are some of the
questions that that I have lived with or
I grew up with rather right and that
really is the start of what I think of
my calling or my career and that’s
really designed so not so many years ago
I was I was an aspiring student like
many of you and I had to take a decision
about what I wanted to study and of
course I had engineering on top of my
mind because we have such great
technical institutes and everything was
going alright but I had to kind of ask
myself hey when I look at something is
how does this thing work is that right
the first question that comes to my mind
and if I honestly ask myself that the
answer was always not really you know I
think I care about what that thing means
to other people right so that was very
revealing for me I was interested in how
things work I think that’s very
important that’s a very important part
of what I do but at the same time a more
prominent question that I want to answer
or want an answer to is what does this
thing whatever it is what does it mean
right what does it mean to people what
has enable people to do and that really
that thinking was really something that
brought me closer to design I didn’t
think that I was going to be a designer
I took it off because of this question
this motivating question and I have to
say that it has been a revealing journey
from there in trying to understand how I
can create meaning through my work so
today I’m going to share with
you my P principal the only tree how I
try to make my more work more meaningful
and I think they I hope they can apply
to many of you in making your work more
meaningful so first one I want to talk
about is the idea of focusing on value
for this one I have a story about music
I’m a musician I perform professionally
in India and cities I used to have a
band in college and as a as someone who
loves music and I’m sure many of you do
as well you would agree with me that
music has benefits much beyond just
entertainment if you’re a musician it’s
a great way to to build your creativity
it’s a great way to be stress distract
yourself it’s a great way to seriously
pursue an art and it’s a great social
enabler and a social connector and I’m
fascinated by music and at some point in
my in my life I got interested in
children with cerebral palsy so for
those of you who you don’t who don’t
know what it is it’s a condition where
part one half of your body basically is
paralyzed fully or partially right
and I contrasted in these children and
the way they live their lives and I saw
in front of me kids who were isolated
from normal society because of their
functional limitations and who could not
participate to their fullest in in
society and I was I thought hey you know
I I love music music has done so many
things for me in these directions why
why don’t I think of some way of of
giving these kids or making music taking
music closer to these kids so I spent a
lot of time with them and what I
realized was yes
long these kids were actually very
interested in music and they were being
exposed to a lot of music but if you
look at an instrument if you look at a
traditional instrument what is the
traditional instrument about when I
think of an instrument like a guitar I
learned to play the guitar I had to
spend like two years before I could play
one song right I had to spend that time
to play a song had to learn the
instrument first and then play a little
more and find my friends and so forth
and learn to play in a group and then we
could actually play some songs and
that’s when I got started getting the
fulfillment of having made music
together right and a lot of the
instruments that were around are
essentially built for this and the
values that you associate with
instruments is one of virtuosity of
mastery of you know relentless practice
of meditative States and so forth and
that’s all great but well when I looked
at these kids
and I asked the question okay but what
is the value of instruments for them I
were a completely different answer these
kids were not interested in becoming
virtuoso musicians right for them music
was a way to have fun to communicate to
connect with each other and to distract
themselves and enable themselves to
participate more fully in society that’s
the value of a musical instrument and
then the question I had was how might we
design such a musical instrument that
can serve this purpose for these kids
and this was the result I have a small
video that shows what the kids were able
to do with it
[Music]
I’m sorry
[Music]
[Music]
you
I was able to take those and think of a
new way of making music accessible to
thee do that in a way that added value
to their lives
and that made the work more meaningful
to me the next principle I want to share
is making it effortless I had an
opportunity to work with with a family
physician on making the healthcare
experience better for patients and it
started with a similar kind of
exploration into what is the value that
people are looking for when it comes to
their health or the health care
experience and the answer was quite
simple people want to get better people
go to a doctor to get better but if you
look at Family Physicians today and the
way they need to operate today we
studied family physicians and we found
that you know they were looking at
hundreds of patients every day sitting
in a cubby hole on the street somewhere
and with hundreds of patients a day all
you can do basically is just take a look
at the face ask them what’s the problem
and hand him some pills and say bye-bye
that’s it that’s the quality of the
interaction that a family physician
unfortunately that’s the time that he
gets on the opportunity that he gets to
interact with the patients right but
what if we changed us around and said
okay what’s really valuable for people
is to get better and getting better
involves so many more things it’s not
just about getting the right pills it’s
about getting the right advice it’s
about getting the right medication that
suits your body and your history so it’s
about sharing all these things as well
it’s also about making sure that the
prescriptions or the treatment has
worked what is the status of that what
additional enablement is required in
terms of you know for many an illness is
a family affair if the person who’s
earning fall sick the entire family
effective how can we help people deal
with that and that is all this is a part
of the experience of getting better
that’s the value so that’s so we’ve we
honored so many kinds of things and of
course the solution involved you know
changing the way doctors relate to
patients by giving them access or giving
them the tools to engage with patients
throughout this journey around these
broader needs but in doing that so we we
follow the first principle like we found
where the value was and we tried we
created something that could fill that
gap but what we found was that no matter
how good a solution you make right you
have to look at the reality of the
doctor which is like it’s he still sees
100 patients a day he doesn’t have time
to learn a new system and to integrate
that a part and make it a part of his
you know practice if that system does
not work in the framework or the
constraints that he has in the way he
works and if you look at so we looked at
like currently available systems and
they were very complicated they are all
designed for heavy record-keeping your
electronic health records mainly coming
from the insurance industry and so forth
where everything is required to be noted
down and all that goes into a case
history and that can be used in a legal
kind of framework or a setting and we
said hey you know for the purpose that
we have we don’t need to make things so
complicated what we want is a very
simple system that doctors can use to
have this kind of relationship with
their patients
yet which would fit in their current
book and that led to developing a system
that the doctor could use in twenty
seconds or less that was our goal and to
enable this kind of relationship and
that’s this small clip where you see an
actual doctor using the system
[Music]
so in 20 seconds so no complicated EHRs
no complicated devices everything on a
tablet in 20 seconds – to enable you to
give the value or the experience that
your patients want to get better so
that’s really my second principle it’s
not enough to find the value in design
for it you have to make it effortless
for people to be able to adopt it and
that increases the meaning of my work by
getting it in the hands of the people
that are going to use it
the third principle that I want to share
which I learned later in my career is
about creating a hook some years before
I had the opportunity to lead a
postgraduate program in design for
entrepreneurs the idea was that a lot of
students today would like to start their
own businesses because that has become a
viable option as a career option and the
law of creative students or creative
individuals actually see that as their
favorable or favored career choice so
why don’t we have a postgraduate program
that gives students the knowledge and
the means for them to do this and as the
director of the program I had the
opportunity to design the whole
curriculum and the way it was going to
be delivered and so forth so I used my
principle one which was find out where
the value is and the value is really
about helping creative people start
businesses or get independent in that
sense in a career sense and the way to
make it simple is to make it very
practical and non textbook II and have a
lot of projects and hands on work to
reinforce the right behaviors and to
enable experience based learning or
reflective learning this is a program
that was meant for non designers because
creative people are everywhere and
everybody could potentially start a
business but when we launched the
program
or the way we spoken about spoke about
it we we targeted it at creative
entrepreneurs and the first year we got
like three students in the second year
we got five I said hey there’s a problem
we’ve applied the right principles we
found out that there’s value in this
it’s actually leading to leading people
to a place where they want to be which
is like the independent creatively and
have a business and it’s also we’ve
architected and designed it in a way
that makes it easy for people with no
background in design to consume it and
to learn what they need to learn but we
are not seeing the right kind of
engagement we’re not seeing the right
kind of adoption and the lesson there
was so what we did was we we changed
that or rather the turning point for us
was to realize it may be creative
entrepreneurship or becoming
entrepreneurs is an end goal and in
itself it’s a very challenging goal and
most people most students see that as
something difficult that can be only
achieved after a while it takes
investment from them to come to the
level that they’re comfortable with
saying that hey I can be an entrepreneur
what we realized was that there were a
whole lot of people or students who just
wanted to be more creative in whatever
they were doing and that’s a very
different thing and a very easy thing to
get started with and if you compare it
with directly saying that hey I want to
be a creative entrepreneur so with that
in sight we read we reframe the program
saying hey this is not a program for
creative entrepreneurs per se but it’s a
program for anybody from any background
who wants to get wants to be more
creative in the approach that they have
towards their work so we reframed it
like that and suddenly the program
strength went from four to thirty the
next year everything was the same
the value created was the same we were
still making people creatively
independent we were still delivering the
program in an easy practical
experience based learning framework the
only thing we changed was that we
created a hook that allowed people to
make it a part of their lives faster
remove that friction as well so though
those were my three principles of making
the meaning of my work stronger making
my work more meaningful if I have to sum
it up I think the most meaning that I
get from my work is when my work goes
out and gets used by others for whatever
purpose it was designed for so for me I
see my work as something that is always
at the service of a higher purpose and a
purpose that is defined by somebody else
so that’s it for my work that’s how I
find meaning in my work and I make my
work more meaningful I hope this is
something you can take away and apply it
to you thank you
[Applause]
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