Chasing Impact: Greatest Hits (and Misses) | Ayush Chauhan | TEDxTDV
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0e2d0g6LcLA Video ID: 0e2d0g6LcLA ============================================================ [Music] So at the start of this year, two moments defined a new chapter for my firm Quicksand. The first one was a quiet one but powerful for us. We announced our merger with our European partners. It was not a headline grabbing moment, but in the niche world of design for social impact, it was a big moment. A global south practice joining hands with another small firm in the global north. If I had to give this moment a title in our life of 20 years, it would be small is beautiful. It validated something that we have been uh we've held very strongly for years. That real impact is not just about millions of lives saved. Impact is also about many small thoughtful experiences which make people feel valued and seen. And a small design firm doing it for two decades and going global was a redemption of that belief. But just a week later, a lot changed in the world of impact. January 24th this year, the new US administration started to dismantle US aid. Billions in aid vanished overnight. Progress on several impact indicators that a lot of us track, whether it's literacy, sanitation, infant mortality were all suddenly at risk. And the world asked, can development survive? Can we go back to status quo and what role does design have in this new order and suddenly another title became just as relevant and that is that small is also vulnerable. This is where design for impact has to thrive between these two truths between beauty and vulnerability between hope and disruption. This isn't our first crisis. uh in my memory of 20 years, this is probably our fourth. But I'm still standing here to tell the tale. And there are three lessons that I want to share with you today. Some that have served us well and some that were near misses. Design has the power to build collaborations. So flex it. Collaborations in the impact space are hard. Why, you may ask? Because incentives don't always line up. Governments want stability. Design and innovation often demands disruption. Academia moves slowly and policymakers want to move fast. Think of uh the municipal commissioner who in two years has to make his mark and move to his next uh assignment. Civil society often protects the margins and policy often serves the mainstream. uh often working at the lowest common denominator but at the exclusion of the edge cases. So where does design fit within this web of actors where each one is holding on to their biases, their priorities and this is what we have learned in our practice that the secret to strong collaborations is on one part uh finding shared purpose. uh on the other part you need to create value so that the other can build on it right and design helps find the overlap between the two the common ground that's where meaningful collaboration happens we've often been told in our work that design felt like therapy right because it created space for people to come together to reflect to share ideas to debate and it's a rare privilege for teams often in bureaucratic organizations and systems right that space to be able to really genuinely collaborate and co-create with each other. But design helps you do that, right? It does that by bringing the stories of the end user into the room by making kind of assumptions more tangible and people start to debate on ideas and not just opinions. We've uh we've embraced that role of uh therapists of systems, right? of learning to diagnose, to reframe, to listen. But like all therapy, it takes time and it takes patience and it did not all start like that. Design is part of the inquiry and not the answer. In 2012, uh we had the privilege of leading a massive sanitation campaign in partnership with government of India. It was a panindia campaign. It was called the great washiatra. It had all the media buzz, uh, celebrities, a traveling fair that moved across five states. We really thought we had nailed it. It was sort of, you know, the the moment of glory for design. Uh, so we designed a fair that at every pit stop it made, it became a a spectacle, a mass massive spectacle. It had several interactive games, uh, a traveling theater that thousands would come and watch. Uh we produced a sanitation a very cheeky sanitation jingle uh with a film producer in Bombay. Uh celebrities and top government officials would come and address the masses. Uh so design really had a free reign and we pulled out all the stops to spread the message of safe sanitation loud and clear. But the evaluation of this program told a completely different story. No one remembered the message. No behavior changed in uh all kind of effectiveness, it was actually a massive failure. Why? Because uh outside of what is visible, we actually rush to give answers too quickly. We instead of asking the right questions, what motivates people, what holds them back, what is their context? We forgot that design must start with curiosity, with listening, with research. And when we shortcut the process of inquiry, we lose the impact. The third and an important lesson is that design thrives in the in between spaces. Our team at Quicksand comprises of different disciplines from management, from liberal arts, sciences, engineering. That diversity isn't just about different skills that we bring, but it is also different uh views and values that we all represent. These differences play out in the practice almost every day, mostly as a debate and as a tension. The need for wealth creation as a business, right? That's one sort of force at play. Uh on the other, artistic expression which cannot be measured in productive terms, right? Or profitable terms or the activism that comes from working naturally at the grassroots because you're championing the voices of the marginalized. We also work with very different clients. a philanthropic funer, a mainstream bank, a nonprofit working with disadvantaged communities, an arts and cultural institution. It's not easy to make the switch from one to the other. We have debated endlessly about these issues. Do we serve a global fertilizer company looking to make inroads into the country while at the same time working with farmer collectives you know whose indigenous practices and knowledge are fast getting eroded or at a time when a large social network company uh was building a campaign and our friends and partners were championing for the free internet right so it hasn't really been easy but holding these different worlds together has helped us spot opportunities that others have missed. For example, doing a study on youth and social media that helps us understand youth's aspirations has also helped us design a public health program for adolescence where we don't speak about uh medical terms that don't make sense but we speak to the aspirations of the youth or our annual arts festival that perhaps some of you have attended Unbox uh which usually leaves a a deep hole in the pocket every time we conduct it but it's also become our biggest network of allies for cutting edge innovation work. So the lines we draw between the left and the right brain, between the analytical and the creative, between what we deem as personal and professional, these are often very artificial lines because as human beings we are complex and our work and practice should reflect that complexity. So in the end, where does this leave us? And I'm addressing it to a bunch of students here who are entering a world that's more complex, faster moving, and harder to predict. As some of you think of starting this journey either as entrepreneurs or as design professionals and specifically in the domain of design for impact, three things will always matter. Collaborate deeply, stay curious, and embrace plurality because design gives you the tools to do all three. So, you need to step up and own it. [Applause]