Customer Centricity is the key driving force for Design Thinking: Dr Gopichand Katragadda, Group CTO, Tata Sons

Companies want to rank high on the Innovation Index. There are various techniques to get Innovative. Design Thinking is one of them. WIth the whole gamut of technologies available and their applicabilities, the CIO is constantly challenged to be on the top of the curve on his Innovation quotient. In an exclusive chat with Express Computer, Dr Gopichand Katragadda, Group CTO, Tata Sons shares thoughts on Design Thinking and how he looks at it, given the kind of businesses the Group is into – from salt to software

The Tata Group is the only Indian company in the Fortune’s global list of top 50 most Innovative companies. They have focussed on design thinking to an extent that the Group has formed a Design Forum. The Group is encouraging and promoting the concept of Design Thinking. Dr. Gopichand Katragadda is driving this process of applying ‘Design Thinking’ rigorously across the group. Tata InnoVista, Tata Tech Talks, Tata Group Design Forum, Workshops within the group where designers from different companies come together to discuss problems are some initiatives being taken to promote Design Thinking.

The Tata group design forum was launched in April 2015 during Tata Innovista. This forum is being led by Pankaj Jhunja, design champion from Tata Motors.

The participating Tata companies at the design forum are:Tata Global Beverages, Tata Elxsi, Tata Motors, Titan Company Ltd., Jaguar & Land Rover, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd., Tata Interactive Systems, and Tata Consulting Engineers which covers its use across diverse domains of Product and Packaging design, user experience design, Architecture and Urban planning etc.

Dr Katragadda defines Design Thinking as a tool to understand the requirement and desires of the customer and accordingly designing products and services. “Design Thinking is a process to develop new products and services with the customer experience as a driving force. A critical aspect of design thinking process is to have a user experience center with mechanisms to observe and obtain live feedback from future users of the products and services. For a CIO, examples will include, observing internal customers via cameras, mouse clicks, and keyboard usage when they are asked to use a potential new application. Customer Centricity, hence, is the key driving force,” says Dr Katragadda.

Katragadda also shares tips with CIOs on ways to leverage this technique originally conceptualised by the Stanford University into business process oriented thinking. “The CIOs are already leveraging agile development in their organisations. Agile development inherently includes elements of design thinking like frequent end-user feedback,” advises Dr. Katragadda. Design thinking further emphasizes end-user observation in a controlled environment with frequent touch points. “CIOs can consider building a basic user experience center with simple technology elements and small space. They will also have to hire the right kind of talent to translate the observations into products and services,” he says.