Three people who make design decisions every day without being designers by title: a pharmacy-chain founder, a head of engineering and a creative head. They explain what design means to them, how they stay close to customers, how they settle disagreements and when they trust a designer.
In the first Tcules podcast, published in August 2023, Jatin Leuva talks to three people who shape design decisions in their organisations:
- Parasharan Chari, Founder of Medkart Pharmacy, which he describes as an omnichannel pharmacy retail chain with about 108 stores across Gujarat and Rajasthan;
- Dhimant Trivedi, Head of Engineering at Contrado, a personalised web-to-print business;
- Akshay Vyas, Creative Head at Knovos, a technology company in data life cycle management, where he also looks after branding and marketing.
They cover what design means to each of them, how they stay connected with customers, how decisions get made when design, engineering and the business disagree, when they stop trusting a designer, and what AI is changing. Store numbers and roles are as stated at the time of recording.
Guests
Parasharan Chari
Founder, Medkart Pharmacy
Dhimant Trivedi
Head of Engineering, Contrado
Akshay Vyas
Creative Head, Knovos
Host
Jatin Leuva
Co-founder and CEO, Tcules
Chapters
- 0:00 Introduction
- 2:07 Journey and role of each stakeholder
- 9:07 What is design for you
- 16:02 How do you stay connected with the users
- 29:26 How do you make design decisions
- 34:46 How to build consensus among the stakeholders
- 46:36 When do you stop trusting a designer
- 48:01 Impact of AI on their businesses and design process
- 52:41 Advice for designers and other product stakeholders
What design means to them
Asked how they interpret design, the guests describe it in terms of their own operations rather than screens.
For Parasharan Chari, design is whatever makes a job easier. In a Medkart store, the strips of medicine are too cheap to barcode, so staff type each one in, and an intuitive search is a design decision. So is how a single screen prompts the health advisor to offer products a customer did not come in for. In the warehouse, it is shaving a second off the time it takes to pick a medicine.
Dhimant Trivedi describes a design decision with no designer involved. To record when a print roll leaves the printer without asking the operator to log it, Contrado's software adds a small barcode to the end of each print file, and a scanner fixed next to the printer reads it as the roll comes out.
A point made in the conversation is that design is not limited to designers or to software. One guest describes design as a language you use to communicate or to invoke certain emotions, which applies differently depending on what you are designing.
“There's a typical medicine which has a 38-second pick time. If I can make it 37, I'm talking about those 10,000 strips giving me 10,000 more seconds in a day… Broadly, for me, design is something that aids operations.” Parasharan Chari, Founder, Medkart Pharmacy (12:17)
How they stay connected with customers
Parasharan Chari's team talks to a sample of about five to six thousand customers a month, in stores and by phone, to check whether what each customer walked in for matched what the store delivered. The answers are scored on eight parameters, from look, feel and ambience to location, service standards and the health advisor's knowledge, and each parameter that slips becomes a training input. He also runs mystery audits and calls loyal customers for focus group discussions.
“If I have to get driven by emotions of customers who are walking in, I think I'll be running astray.” (19:19)
At Contrado, Dhimant Trivedi connected the QA team directly with the customer service team when the India operations were set up, so problems customers reported reached the people testing the product. Requirements still come from the product team and stakeholders; the QA link is how customers' pains are collected.
Akshay Vyas describes building his understanding across Knovos, from the developers to the people talking to clients and up to the CEO, and sorting each problem into people or process before deciding what to change.
How decisions get made when people disagree
Jatin frames the familiar tensions: opinion against data, research against the features sales says it needs, and the polished version design wants against the simpler version engineering says it can ship.
One guest argues that usage data needs investigating before it is trusted, because heavy use of a feature may only mean users are working around something they cannot do directly:
“Collecting data from the product and not talking to the customers directly will create a huge gap between your understanding and what's actually happening, so you have to talk to the customers.” (31:02)
Parasharan Chari starts from a hunch based on experience and tests it before committing:
“Say, for example, if there are 100 stores, I can use a certain way across 10 stores and try another 10… that gives us certain data on whether what we thought was right or not.” (34:05)
On deadlocks between design, technology and the business, the discussion turns to separating must-haves from good-to-haves and starting with a basic version that solves today's need, with a timeline towards the ideal. Who carries more weight, one guest says, depends on the organisation's UX maturity and on whether an argument is backed by data or only by a hunch. On stakeholder ego, the view is that a stakeholder who resists a design has usually not yet seen its business impact, so someone has to act as a bridge who understands both sides, and designers gain by empathising with stakeholders as well as users.
“If not used properly, basically it's not you who are writing the code, it's that editor, it's that co-pilot, and that's where you don't get to sharpen your programming skills.” Dhimant Trivedi, Head of Engineering, Contrado (50:24)
When they trust a designer, and what AI changes
Asked when they stop trusting a designer, one guest points to work that mimics the competition too closely, and another turns the question round: trust is earned as a designer grows into the organisation. Parasharan Chari sets out what he expects first:
“Fundamentally there are four pillars that we try every designer to go through: one is understanding a product or service, understanding our customer, understanding our operations as a company, and fourth is understanding the team, so that he gives me a feasible set of solutions.” (47:31)
On AI, the guests are wary of beginners leaning on it. One says they would not recommend it to a novice designer: it helps seasoned people who already know the fundamentals and speeds up their process. Dhimant Trivedi compares it to developers moving from searching for answers, to copying code from Stack Overflow, to Copilot. Parasharan Chari says Medkart uses AI for content, in-store and social media creative, packaging and management reports, but less for understanding customers, who he says are changing faster than AI trained on past data can follow.
Their advice
For designers, Parasharan Chari's advice is to understand the business: its product or service, customers, operations and team, so the solution is practical and feasible. For businesses hiring designers:
“Please define your needs better, because a lot of times loosely crafted requirements have a lot of standoffs.” (53:32)
Another guest suggests judging a designer by how they read the organisation and how often they bring bright ideas, rather than by time served. The closing advice is empathy for everyone in the room, not only users, because a designer needs the agreement of each stakeholder before an idea can move forward.
The episode suits founders, product managers and designers who make product calls together, and engineering-led teams working out where design fits in their decisions.
Editor's note
This was the first Tcules podcast, published on YouTube in August 2023. Roles, store numbers and opinions are as the guests stated them at the time of recording.