Opinion Customer as muse

We’ve heard the phrase “customer is king” often enough. Perhaps the mutual distance one keeps from a monarch has prevented most industrial designers from being inspired by the customer. If you as the designer consider the customer your muse,your design will become a piece of art reflecting the latent desires of the customer. The customer’s contribution will then become real,the care for the customer’s feeling will form the industrial designer’s mode of working,similar to the way an artist has a symbiotic relationship with the muse.

This caring factor somehow seems to be discounted these days. One day,at work in London,an English client expressed an interest to experience something Indian. Luckily,an inner hall of Wembley had a function with singers from India,so I took my client there. Naturally,the audience was largely Indian with just a handful of Europeans. One thing bothered me a lot when I was there. Appreciative spectators were rushing up to give bouquets to the artists on stage,but the artists did not greet them with care or receive the flowers graciously. A few even publicly threw the bouquets,instead of delicately putting them away in response to the audience’s affection. These artists totally lacked in the artistic understanding of human behaviour.

Another set who lack a caring attitude are Indian politicians. The more famous they get,the larger becomes the size of the garlands they receive. The politician seems to always be in a great hurry to take off the huge garland,passing it on to someone behind them in less than a second. How terrible the large group of his cadre followers and voters must feel,and even worse the makers of these fabulous,humungous garlands that their carefully crafted work is not appreciated. If politicians considered the crowd and garland maker as their muse,perhaps they would react with more sensitivity instead of just hankering after power,counting heads at the gathering or worrying about whether all the TV channels are covering them.

In the service industry,aside from those who interact with customers,the company also has to be sensitive in their approach. Travelling in a big-size business class chair on a domestic flight,the stewardess gives you a cup of tea in a beautiful bone China set,but she carries that on a horrible plastic tray that looks like it belongs to a prison canteen. It’s not her mistake,but that of the management. Those who designed the service looked at consuming elements only — there was total neglect of aesthetic sense in matching the tray with the high-class crockery and cutlery. India’s service industry has a lot to learn about how to embellish a service by taking the customer as the reference of a muse. 

In engineering products that are handled by the masses,the engineer-designer has the huge responsibility of creating an incredible ergonomic relationship between the product and its customer. Ergonomics is human engineering,the study of our relationship with our working environment with special reference to anatomical,physiological and psychological factors. In my training sessions with engineer-designers of different Indian companies,they understand ergonomics in a very technical way; they pay little heed to how human beings love to touch,which is a natural instinct. You’ll never find sharp edges in nature’s creatures,be it trees or human beings. This deficiency of not inviting the ergonomic way into industrial design gets reflected in most Indian engineering products such as automobiles,consumer electronics,among others.

The attraction to become an artist’s muse is the artistic,tangible embellishment that the artist bestows in the painting from the inspiration he receives from the muse. Drawing an analogy,you as an engineer-designer have to do something to your customer,your muse,so he or she inspires you to create humanised ergonomics in your design. For example,there’s technology and material in every electronic machine. What’s important is creating an ergonomic distinction that induces a psychological involvement in terms of looks and functions. Your humanised product has to evoke a feeling that’s higher in the customer’s mind than that of your competitor’s products. You will find this sense of humanised ergonomics in products of Apple,Samsung or Sony where the touch,look or features have some distinct psychological appeal,but may not find it in Philips even though Philips is a very inventive company. 

I’ve observed that luxury residential buildings which cost crores of rupees have artistic deficiency in their finish. A 10th-floor balcony had straight metal railings like those in a factory and the floor tiles corrugated in the sunlight. There’s an 18-inch wall to cross over to the balcony from the living room,so the apartment owner put an ad hoc plastic stool as a step for the convenience of elderly persons. When you approach the lift,there’s a 2-inch granite step in front which a newcomer invariably stumbles over. Having money to spend randomly does not guarantee a quality lifestyle. Unless an artistic sense seeps into urban society at large,these superficially designed living spaces of modern India will deteriorate into garbage after 20 years. Obviously unlike an artist,the builder felt nothing for the muse,the customer.

The artist and the artist’s muse can make powerful contributions to society. Money alone cannot create the social dimension. When Americans come to France,we’ve heard of them enquiring how much it cost to make the Eiffel Tower or Versailles Palace or Louvre Museum. French people laugh and don’t know how to respond.

Shombit Sengupta is an international consultant to top management on differentiating business strategy with execution excellence (www.shiningconsulting.com)