This past weekend my 13 yr. old comes to me and asks that he wants to learn to cook one of his favorite dishes – Bell Pepper “Zunka”, a traditional Indian dish prepared with onions and chickpea flour.
It is generally served with Bhakar, an Indian flatbread. A simple dish with basic ingredients, but with bold flavors, it is/was a quintessential peasant fare in the Western Ghats of India for centuries. My teen is the foodie in the family, yet never showed interest in cooking…. until now! He has a natural flair for identifying ingredients. So, it was going to be easy to teach him, (or so I thought!) and decided to seize this rare opportunity.
He showed up in an apron, cut up the veggies, assembled the spices, turned on the gas and got going – with my instructions in the background:
“Okay, so the mustard seeds need to be dropped in the oil at the righttemperature, and the pop should be just right so when the onions are added, you get this precise whiff and the turmeric goes in exactly………….”.
Before I knew it, I was barraging him with nuances and the do’s and don’ts of hitting (or missing) that punch in the flavors. He was trying his level best to keep up yet missing the pointers. He fires up his assistant (i.e. Alexa) with 90-second and 2-minute timers, trying his best to hit the cues. I was standing there worried the flour would be burnt and had to use every ounce of my energy to not spring into action and save the dish. Fifteen minutes later he had a huge smile. There was this delectable, mouthwatering, beautiful golden-brown entrée with a scintillating green pop and zest.
As I sat down with him to eat this scrumptious meal, he bombards me with questions:
“Mom, why is it that everyone who eats your food loves it so much?”
“How do you know what to do when?”
“How do you know how much to use of each ingredient?”
“How do you know what people will like…all without measuring even one ingredient?”.
He took another bite with a happy, lip-smacking grin of achievement and continues, “and you never follow a recipe or watch food shows”.
As I started to get giddy listening to his praise (why is it that praise from our children gives us more joy than that annual raise from the boss – topic for another day), I could not help but wonder. Later, that night I wrote down the questions – the problem-solver in me wanted to figure out the connections here.
Mental Models meets Design Thinking
I realized that I had subconsciously been collecting and building a data repository in my head about people’s food preferences right down to individual ingredients and presentation – a comment they made at the dinner table, a way they described the food when talking to others, the number of times they helped themselves to one dish over others, the types of dishes they ate more of, the ethnic backgrounds they came from, the conversations it sparked, the emotions it evoked – joy or humor or zzzz, and many more data points that started to slowly form patterns and mental models for me. Even if a person ate my food just once, my brain gathered enough “data” in that one visit to easily “up-it” the next time.
At the core of it, I had been using a (crude version of) “AI meets Design Thinking” approach to getting the job done. I was squarely focused on the people I was creating for, generated a lot of ideas, experimented and iterated, all along wedged in a deep sense of empathy for my “customer”.
Instead of concentrating on a competitive set (what was everyone else making?) or a traditional product-centricity (cook the dish that I believe I should prepare, with no thought of what my guest may like or dislike), I had adopted a design thinking style, that started with (a) a clear understanding of my customer’s needs, powered by (b) the intelligence of multi-dimensional data (quantitative, qualitative, behavioral and contextual) on them, and innovating from (b) a human-centric stand-point.
Competing in the “Age of the customer” has undoubtedly mobilized competing in the Age of AI. The quest for human-level AI is at its peak, and the hype is unavoidable. Big Tech is investing heavily in the hopes of profoundly transforming the business landscape, and in return AI is learning (way, way) faster. Billions of dollars are being raised to invest in start-up accelerators such as Y combinator.
However, in the absence of deep empathy and a desire for some serious design thinking, we will be building new yet indistinguishable products and services that don’t carry sustainable gains with competitive advantage. Today’s companies have relentless earnings pressure from Wall Street. Appetite for customer focus and design thinking are often stemmed as a result, compromising on real growth.
When AI complements itself with humans, organized around customer’s unmet needs and pain-points, and a clearly articulate Job-to-be-done, design thinking can do wonders to innovate and generate transformational experiences. It encourages organizations to focus on the people they’re creating for, which leads to better products, services, and internal processes.
I am not a chef by any stretch of imagination, but the above personal story reminded me that for data to create competitive advantage it is critical to bolt on great empathy, a deep understanding of customer’s needs and a passion to create, iterate and refine. That is when magic happens and we will be able to innovate on products and services, orchestrate world-class experiences, and build journeys across channels that help our customers reach their potential every step of the way.
Kiran Uppuluri
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