3 Laws of Design Thinking

Three Laws of Design Thinking©
© Copyright by Arun Jain, Polaris Banyan Holding Private Limited, 2022

All rights reserved. Any use or copy of the same shall be upon written permission from the copyright owner.
Based on our knowledge and experience in applying Design Thinking, we thought of giving a thumb rule to guide
our thought process. We call it the ‘Three Laws of Design Thinking’ which are briefly explained here. Each law is
very relative and contextual in nature and is to be applied as appropriate.
Law #1: Less is More

It is very important to remove redundancy and focus on what matters the most. Apple identified that public at
large was interested in listening to only one or two particular songs from the entire album. Yet, they had to
purchase the entire album. Why should they pay more? That triggered them to bring iTunes to the market and the
rest is history. Similarly, HP created a device that gave functionalities of three various devices viz. The Printer,
The Copier and the Scanner.
Another common example of Less is More is the ‘Notepad’. The creators of Notepad knew what is needed for
people to scribble on the go. People won’t need sophisticated fonts, filters, calculations, art-styles. People needed
an editor to type. With minimal features, Notepad is hit and has managed to stay relevant till date.
On the similar lines, how well have we understood our customers to identify what is the most important need to
them? The intent of this law was to redirect our focus to what matters the most.
2
Law #2: The Last 2% is 200%
Any two products or services in the market will provide nearly similar majority of the features to the customers.
Consider the example of a 5-Star hotel and a 7-Star hotel. While most of the services will be the same yet how a 7-
Star hotel takes care of someone’s unstated needs makes a long-lasting impact. That creates the moment of
delight for customers. That 2% service is the differentiator that makes the difference. Speaking of hotels, I would
like to share an anecdote of the Ritz Carlton. It is said that someone stayed at one of the Ritz Carlton hotels in
London and ordered a particular type of coffee multiple times during the stay. Subsequently, he travelled to
Singapore and stayed again in Ritz Carlton. To his utter surprise, without even a request, one of the hotel staff
asked him if he would like to have the same coffee any time during the day. He informed the guest about his stay in
London where he had ordered for the type of coffee multiple times and if he wanted his favorite beverage any time
soon.
Such instances that create an ‘Aha Moment’ do leave a long-lasting impact on customers. Those may form only
1% or 2% of the overall services rendered, but they have the potential to create a 200% impact.
3
Law #3: Theory of Prioritization
The choice between 1000gm, 100gm, 10 gm
During any problem-solving exercises, we generate a lot of ideas during brainstorming. We compile a list of various
ideas to solve the problem. However, we may not implement all the ideas. Thus we are forced to filter ideas and
identify few ideas that are most relevant to the requirement. This phase in Design Thinking / Problem Solving is
called Convergence.
In our Design Thinking Convergence Exercises, we request teams to begin the Convergence Phase by asking
them to find the 1000gm idea. Thus, at a psychological level, in the pursuit to pick up the best idea (1000g idea),
participants begin to discuss on the merits of each idea. Thus, they finish the Convergence Phase by picking the
idea which is 10 times more and 100 times more impactful than the second-best and third-best idea, respectively.
The intent (at the psychological level) is to dissect each idea to find the impact it is going to have on the solution.
Accordingly, participants pick the most impactful idea, which is considered the 1000gm idea.
In this phase, since we ‘weigh’ each idea, we can suffix the weightage with grams.
Why Manifold and not Linear?

Usually, while we rank anything, such as ranking ideas in convergence, provide a feedback on training, rating a
performance, and so on, we are given option to rate on linear scale, for example, rate between 1-10 or rate
between 1-5. Many times, ratings end up as 3 out of 5 or 6/7 out of 10 unless otherwise the performance is
extremely outstanding or extremely poor in quality. Such intermediary rating is ambiguous to the person in need of
any honest feedback. This is not the case when ratings are not linear, but in multiples of 10 and 100. A rating of
10g means the performance is extremely unsatisfactory whereas a rating of 100g means there is a scope of
improvement of 10 times for the best performance. 4

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What are the three laws of design thinking?

What is an example provided to illustrate the 'Law #2: The Last 2% is 200%'?

Three Laws of Design Thinking©

© Copyright by Arun Jain, Polaris Banyan Holding Private Limited, 2022

Law #1: Less is More

Why Manifold and not Linear?

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