How do you spend a four-hour layover at an airport? In the early morning hours? Alcohol is ruled out, at least for me, at that hour. The last time I was at an airport however, I struck gold. If you have a pet peeve, and four hours to see it in action, what more could you ask for? My pet peeve at airports is the water fountains.In those four hours, I saw one man wash the faucet and stick his mouth on it. Small children used their palms to fill water and then drink, while some came with bottles. Only one person used it the way the designer intended it to. Many couldn’t find the lever to push for the water to flow. Several people used it as a wash basin, which is what I think a water fountain resembles the most. We fret about the wrong usage of public conveniences, and the fact that people aren’t educated or aware enough of such things, but I think such a situation arises because of the wrong design of the product. Water fountains are an import from the west, and, in my opinion, represent everything wrong with the way we in India approach design. This is not the first time I have seen a water fountain fail its purpose. At Mumbai airport, I saw a group of about 30 women dressed in traditional Marathi sarees just stand around the fountain and stare at it, not knowing how to use it. Then, someone came up with an empty bottle and solved their problem. I have seen the water fountain at Bangalore airport gradually evolve into a regular tap, Indian style. First, there was the fountain in its purest form, then came the cups, and then the tap changed. The transformation was complete, and people found it easy to use.A fundamental principle of design is empathy or user centricity: has the product been designed with users in mind? In the case of the water fountain, it clearly isn’t. The designer has made a fundamental error, thinking of himself as the only kind of user. Someone told me once that India is art-rich and design-poor. This struck me as an appropriate assessment. Design poverty is evident everywhere in our country: the way our public utilities are designed, as are railway stations, buildings and government offices. Our police stations are not approachable, and public transport is not very convenient. We cannot blame everything on the population; some fault also lies in our poor design capabilities. Many people misinterpret design as a superficial appliqué, purely to make something look good, and ignore its importance in the conceptualisation of the product. Both ‘form’ and ‘function’ have a distinct role to play in design. Form builds the desire to create an artefact, whereas ‘function’ sustains its usage. For most designers, it is this bridge between form and function that presents a challenge. This is where behavioural design comes in.Understanding human behaviour and designing for a sequence of behaviours that change with time and context is possibly the only overarching design principle that can bridge the ‘form-function’ gap. Take Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) housing, for instance. It seems the right thing to do in Mumbai. Since most people in this city live in apartments, why shouldn’t slum-dwellers want the same? But what designers didn’t take into account is that slum-dwellers spend more time in the open space outside their dwelling, and the layout of a multi-story apartment building doesn’t allow for such community living. Also, many of them set up small shops (selling paan or beedi, for example) to supplement their incomes, and this is not possible in an apartment complex. So these people move back into the slums, and we wrongly doubt their motives and assume they are playing the system.Another example is the safety protective equipment we import from the west and expect our workers to use. Such equipment is heavy, thick and designed for moderate and cold climates. Try wearing such gear in 45 degree heat! Look around and you’ll find many such western imports. Not all of them are bad, but not all are appropriate either. There are a several reasons why we in India are design poor. For one, there are times when we simply bring in stuff from the west. I once had a long and futile argument with a tourism official of a Middle Eastern country. He wanted to run the campaign “Come to our country. We give you the Sun” in India. This campaign was successful in the west. I explained to him that India gets more than enough sun, and can probably export some to other countries. The campaign was still launched in India, and it failed spectacularly.India neither produces nor employs as many designers as it needs. There is a general impression that anybody can do the job of a product designer, a service designer, an industrial designer or a communication designer. As a result, we end up with products and services that are great on form but poor on function, like the water fountain.We have a rather poor understanding of design as a discipline and a process, and tend to confuse it with engineering. We design things that may be functionally good, but poor at appeal and liveability. A classic case is the Indian toilet. To urgently reduce open defecation, the government is building millions of personal toilets across the country. These are basic toilets, 6x4, and extremely functional, but that’s about it. But people don’t like them, so they don’t use them. The fact that they serve the purpose of a toilet is clearly not enough. In contrast, look at the urban toilet and how we have embellished the loo!Also, design in general is seen as very elitist. Some designers position their products and designs such that only the affluent have access to them. Over a period of time, the word “designer” has come to relate to the fashionable or fancy. At such a time, education might be the only means of dissipating design-thinking among the masses. I believe there is a strong case for introducing the basics of design and design-thinking at the secondary school level. Every student that graduates from our schools should have a basic understanding and appreciation of good design. Similarly, at the university level, every engineer should also be able to appreciate the value of good design. One way to do this is to set up more design schools. Business schools could also offer some courses. INSEAD, considered one of the world’s top B-schools, offers an MBA where students spend three months studying design. At a time when abject poverty is rampant, it might appear grossly inappropriate to talk of design poverty, but I believe design and poverty are deeply interconnected. We have an urgent need to get out of this design poverty. This could also solve some fundamental problems. It could make the difference between using and not using a toilet, and solve a serious health crisis. It could make driving safer, and work environments more secure. Good design could make government offices more open and transparent, government services more user-friendly, rather than favouring the government workers, and application forms for such services easier for people to fill up.This means designing our education system around the users and not around standardised tests. Least of all, it means making something as simple as drinking water easily available to the general public, rather than making it seem like rocket science!

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Ram Prasad is a co-founder of FinalMile, a Mumbai and Chicago based research & design consultancy that solves complex behavioural challenges. Its practise of Behaviour ArchitectureTM is built on the precepts of cognitive neuroscience, behavioural economics and design. These sciences challenge existing paradigms on human condition and behaviour. FinalMile's work spans the commercial as well as the social/developmental sector. In his earlier roles, Ram dabbled in branding, design, M&A, marketing, innovation and communications. He has delivered guest lectures at leading institutions in India and Europe.