Approaching healthcare through the head and heart.
My job title?
Behaviour Design Lead and Engagement Manager for Health and Life Science at Fractal Analytics
What is your typical "day in the life of a behavior designer"?
My day starts around before sunrise with a daily check-in with my team in India. Then, there is focused time over breakfast and coffee for ongoing and new projects, coaching, and collaborations with smaller team members or individuals in the analytics, engineering, and experience teams.
I am usually in back-to-back calls until the early afternoon. Then I have some time to pause from the screen and grab lunch.
Post that, I jump into the second part of my work day which is mostly focussed on client connects and projects, individual work for internal initiatives, and meeting with the multidisciplinary teams and their leadership team sitting out of the US and Canada.
I end the day by incorporating some learning in the form of a chapter in a book, a podcast, or an article and sharing updates/ tasks for the India team. I wrap by early evening and use the remainder of my time exercising, cooking, cleaning, working on Maajhi (my initiatives in end-of-life care) and spending time with my partner by exploring different neighbourhoods in the city (mostly in search of live music, interesting cuisines, book, stationery and antique stores, unusual architecture), cycling or walking on the Harbour Front, meeting friends, and finding spots to see the city’s beautiful sunsets.
Design principles you live by?
Success belongs to a team, not an individual.
Always prioritize alone time and your individual growth, that’s when you can really hear yourself.
Inspired by Isle Crawford: We have 2 eyes, 2 ears and 1 mouth and we must use them in that proportion.
Aesthetics is not just about making something look beautiful: it is a fundamental foundation for process, function, storytelling, strategy and more.
Less is more (and subtraction is always harder than adding!)
What problem can't you stop thinking about?
Building dignified ecosystems and services for seniors.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
Can I get three?
1. As long as you sincerely do YOUR best, you won’t have to run after the world’s benchmarks.
2. Be comfortable with silence.
3. While purpose finding is crucial, one of the most important skills to learn is monotony management (a term coined by my father).
All these pieces of advice come from my father, one of my biggest heroes in life.
When is "Design done wrong"?
I once read that good design is invisible, and that really stuck with me because bad design is so visible and often, is the norm. The places where it bothers me the most are airports and healthcare. It suffers from basic human and humane-centred thinking in so many places.
People often have no choice but to resign to it and in some of these cases, it reduces their dignity: from seniors being vulnerable and discouraged to take a trip and in some cases due to long lines and lack of help, or life-threatening if patients take the wrong medication due to poor packaging design. It really breaks my heart.
What skill do you wish you picked up really early on?
Creatively: I wish I could play the guitar.
Linguistically: I wish I could speak a third language. There is a unique sense of beauty and expression in every language which is often lost in translation. I often wonder if that would make me more versatile and creative.
Design: Developing more knowledge on the integration of multiple streams of design. Designers are good at collaborating and connecting the dots, but it’s often not taught to us in design school.
Knowing how to integrate a business mindset along with design. Again, it was something that wasn’t taught to us directly. I feel like a lot of that learning came to me outside of the education system.
Design tools you can’t live without? (Physical and/or digital)
I cannot live without stationary. It’s almost impossible for me to walk into a store and not get lost in there for hours! It’s all thanks to my wonderful mother who is an interior and furniture designer.
My current favourites:
Post-its in many colours (including these gorgeous black ones that I recently found)
A 0.7mm Rotring pencil
A Midori notebook
A beginner platinum ink pen (both from Japan). It’s the left-hander's dream to write without smudging and these products will hopefully do the trick! It feels nostalgic, tactile and necessary in an age where we spend most of our days in the digital realm. They remind me of how my mother used to sit on her drafting board. Come to think of it, my entire family is stationary-crazy so it felt like a norm at home.
Digital: I have everything in place to learn pro-create. Time to sign up for some courses!
Books you highly recommend for anyone pursuing a career in design?
The Design of Everyday Things - Don Norman
Think Again- Adam Grant
Creativity.Inc- Ed Catmull
Scarcity- Eldar Shafir and Sendhil Mullainathan
Risk Savvy- Gerd Gigerenzer
Hidden in Plain Sight- Jan Chipchase
Aesthetic Intelligence- Pauline Brown
Designing for Care- Dr. Peter Jones
Designing for Behavior Change- Stephen Wendell
The Courage to be Disliked- Futitake Koga and Ichiro Kishimi
Cosmos- Carl Sagan
When Breath Becomes Air- Paul Kalanithi
User Friendly- Cliff Kaung with Robert Fabricant
Designer friends you admire and we should talk to!
Nihal Ahmed, William S Georg, Kelly Kornet: All incredible designers, futures and innovators (and wonderful human beings)
Where and What did you study?
Grad:
Professional Diploma in Textile Design
Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology, India
Masters:
Master of Design in Strategic Foresight and Innovation
OCAD University, Toronto, Canada
Follow Krittika here!
Maajhi (Founder and Creative Director)
Music (In case anyone wants to listen to some music!)
Linkedin: