I believe that design thinking is the best method to make sense of and solve complex problems. The design process itself is not what motivates me; but rather, the impact the process can have on companies, people, and ultimately the planet.
My path towards Human Centred Design (HCD) hasn’t been straightforward. For most of my life, my primary ambition was to travel. I didn’t know what I wanted to do for work, but I knew that I wanted to travel, and I needed money to make that possible.
I wanted to travel to understand how the world worked. I wanted to study finance to learn how money worked.
These two desires took me around the world and eventually led me to human centred design. In India, I was handed the workload of the Head of Product for a financial inclusion firm. This led to two years of learning design thinking through books and on the job. I loved conducting research and learning about India through this work. I was witnessing how design thinking could help build products and services that could impact the world at scale.
While building HelloGold in South East Asia, books like The Lean Startup and Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products became my bibles as we built the company. Service Design became my focus as I learned how these tools could enable venture building.
More importantly, I started to see how this work aligned to me as a person - to my values and to my abilities. HCD allows me to co-create with people and solve complex problems. I am grateful to be able to do this work. Let’s do it together!