 So, be hi for my team at your designs. Hello. Hi. All right. So I'm not going to talk about women in design. I'm going to talk about design in women. And while I'm talking about this, I'm going to start with a little story. While growing up, like most of us, I had an interesting childhood. My fancy got a few things. I enjoyed painting. I liked traveling. I loved the nature. And I grew up in an army household, so we had a lot of these nature walks. And my parents loved it. So on one of these nature walks, they introduced me and enrolled me to these very interesting classes. And that was my first love. And I was terracotta. So I started learning pottery. It was nice. It was interesting. But now, when I recently started writing my talk, I understood the impact it had on me back then. So these classes were in this little village called Bulu, near Rachi. And in this village, it was this lady who decided to empower all the women by teaching them this art and craft. Now, while I was learning this with them, I realized they were much better than I was. And I actually went for painting classes. So they designed the most amazing patterns, the most functional products in terms of jewelry, pots, a lot of lifestyle, dining sets, and they made it amazingly beautiful. And all of this was exported. So this lady empowered all these other women together and made sure they all were working on something together. Now, when I was writing this talk, why this came to me and why this was important to bring out today was I think there's a certain amount of design sense present in them. So if this design sense was already present and if they studied the science of design, I think today they could have made products which would have been more innovative, more functional, and more thoughtful. They designed how some amount of sense was there. Now, let's separate these two. Let's talk about design and let's talk about women. Now, first let's go with design. On a most basic level, design is solving problems. Big problems, small problems, intricate problems, all sorts of problems. I found my problem solving machine when I was very young. My mom. She could analyze anything. Find a solution to my problem by evaluating every challenge in it, the people I was affecting with my problem, and then find the best solution which made everybody happy. Now, with this, I feel that design somewhere was already there in our household. Remember a time when you were younger, maybe, and you did not like the lunch you took to school. It just was boring. Your mom innovated to make you happy. She came up with a better solution so that you ate your lunch. Then on other days, think of a time where your mom innovated and made a new game for you so that you're busy when she can do her chores. She innovated again for you. Actually can be seen in an everyday situation today also where our mom had these guests who show up without a notice. I mean, I like them, they're nice people, I wanna meet them. But without a notice, what do you do? Our moms go out there, understand their mental models, go back to their kitchens, their setups, figure out what is the most appropriate thing that they can put out to make the experience of that evening perfect. So there again, she's innovated. Now having said this, I feel this whole art of design is only present in every home. And we're all practicing it subconsciously for many years. And now when we sort of learn this, we start practicing it more consciously. All of these people are mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers, great-great-grandmothers have this beautiful talent of solving problems. That means it runs through all our gene foods. You have it in your genes, I have it in mine, and we all have it. So as women, we're practicing this art subconsciously. When we learn a design, we practice it consciously. And it is already present in each one of us. So I think we start now is the time when we need to start exploiting this gene food. And that's where I want to make this one statement, which is each one of us over here needs to stick to the workforce. We may be aspiring designers, working professionals, or students right now. But only if we want to exploit this gene food can we add value to ourselves. Because we all have it in ourselves. So let's exploit it. Now, today I'm fortunately seeing a lot more women in my audience. But in the last four years, I'd say four, five years, sorry, I have been a minority in most design teams. To a point where I was literally the only woman in that design team. And a very interesting question to pose to all of you, will it affect our businesses today to have equal or more number of women in our teams? And if yes, how? So the number of women at youth designs may not be equal, but are more. And somewhere, I've seen how this has changed some bits of things in our office setup. One of the most interesting things that it has impacted in our team is it's brought in duality and thought process. Now, this thought process has changed. We're all getting better at making those decisions. And now we're doing it more consciously. This comes from a concept which I just stumbled upon very recently, called Arunarishwara. It's a form of Lord Shiva in which he's a half woman and a half man which depicts this energy or the synthesis of masculine and feminine energies. Now, if there was a concept like this, why aren't we using it already? So, very recently we took a trip to the holy together as a team and we had a little workshop where we were discussing some of these things. And this whole concept of Arunarishwara made me think of that workshop. What he did there was we decided to define the profile, define the persona of huge designs. And while we were doing this, the outside of huge designs had a very interesting characteristic. So I go with the outside of huge designs has ambition, ego, logic. It's focused, it's detail-oriented, it's active and it's assertive as a brand. Now, when we walk in and take a step inside, look within ourselves, it's empathetic, it's spectacularly inclined, it's sensitive, it's instinctive, it's intuitive, it's sociable and it's holistic. Each of these define every single individual in our team. Each of these defines every designer who's here. Now this holds that up, equips my team to be well-rounded to solve any problem and take on any challenge. I miss the slide-ups. This is the half-bought. Now this has changed how we design. I've noticed this very unique thing that, especially now since I'm consulting more, is when I walk into a room full of men, I'm quite okay and confident to talk, but still, when you're outnumbered, you hesitate, you think, before you want to be opinionated, before you want to put forward something. I would not say this is only for us women, I'd say it's equally for men. So when you're outnumbered, you just hesitate a little. So I'm saying, why do we need to be there? Why do we need to hesitate at all? And this is something that I do not see when we have design reviews back home. When we talk to each other, we have a broader perspective. We've become more liberal. We're open to more new situations. We're aware about the people around us. And this is somewhere helping us creating gender-neutral experiences. I'm sure you all heard the concepts while growing up of either being in a co-ed school, being in a girls' school, being in a boys' school. There was a point in life when I was a big younger, I went to a girls' school only once. But there was a point where people did send their children more to only girls and only boys' schools. But now, more and more people are open to sending their children to co-ed schools. Why is that? I believe it's because each one of us want our children to have a well-rounded personality. We want that when our son or our daughter walks into an office space, we can have strong communication with either gender because of the exposure that they have, because they have those well-rounded personalities. So why not aim for our design teams to have those well-rounded personalities? Which is what is going to influence the products, the experiences which we design. So if we really want to move to a space where we have well-rounded experiences, we need to have well-rounded teams. So as designers, we're slightly selfish, we want this, we want that, and we want fancy stuff. But what do we all really want? We all want to learn, we all want to grow and climb on those ladders that we've imagined, each one of us having a different bracket of success. How do we do this? If we're not going to open up our minds, if we're not going to be liberal, if we're not going to expose ourselves to new ideas, to new thoughts, and that's not going to happen till the time we're in cocoons. So we need to open up those cocoons and get out of those cocoons, break out those liberal views, share those experiences and grow together. Now when I say grow together, I really mean we need to learn to go exist and go respect, to have that moment when we can grow together. I feel as an organization, as a department, or as an individual, we can only reach the heights of success when we want to share these experiences together. And that's the only point when we can start finding those right experiences for ourselves. I want to finally bring to each one of you. And right now, yes, in context to women, I have lined this up. But design is an art which is only present. And when we study it, we will make brilliant designers. But before that, we need to consciously start practicing the art and learning the science of design. Thank you. To aim designs, add new designs. Any questions? Yes. So you talked about how women designers can be broader person joie. Yes. Can you give us a special example of how this joie thing helps you in building a roundabout experience? Alright. So let's talk about the most simple things at work. If it's an all-boys team, right? How do boys believe? All of them together. The bunch of loudings. They're really good. Okay? Wait. Come on. Even in a... I'm going for the most basic, stateable thing that, you know, those are the most instinctive things that are there. You add a woman to the same mix. Things calm down a little. You... You know it. You're agreeing with me. I can see it. Yeah, go ahead. If I'm wrong, what we brought up today feels like women have some socially oppressed classes in the designer section. And we need to really talk to them. It should be user-specific and user-oriented rather than gender-oriented. And what you're talking about, it's true that women by work have that empathy in themselves. But if we as designers can teach men also to inculcate an empathy in them, we will have more as a holistic designer rather than having, you know, bringing in male designers and female designers in the society should be designers. Because if we as designers also don't stop bifurcating male and female and literally more like user and empathy, we won't exist only. That's what differentiate us from other people and other professionals like doctors or engineers or MBAs or any other thing for that matter. I want to add and balance this whole conversation out a little bit. I'm an entrepreneur. I have also around 40 people in my company. Before this, I was in IT. I was managing a group of around 200 people. And when I was hiring for people as a business person and not out of saving somebody from oppression, I always found value in bringing balance to each team not just the 100 people I had but I would actually systematically make sure that there was a balancing energy in the team. And because what happened is and the point is really, really valid. You try to hire 50 freshers and put them in development and you have no women in team of 6 people, the energy is very different. Let's just not deny it. I am not trying to stereotype men but that is what happens. There is a certain amount of patience that comes. There is a certain amount of decorum that comes. There is a certain amount of creative focus that comes compared to achievement focus. Because guys are really, I mean, we are trash. We just want to get things done. My point is totally on the same thing. Okay, got it. One sec. I just want to go back to one thing that I said earlier. I didn't say at any point that as women, I want to put myself down because honestly I am standing here because I am a woman and I am really proud of it. But when I said the point about used designs as when you are on the outside we are keeping the qualities of a man which may vary in different percentages in women and men. I am complete tomboy so those percentages vary for me but when I am talking about my brand and I am talking about my team I am saying I want to use both these qualities that are masculine and feminine to make the most interesting changes to innovate with the right perspective. I do not want to make sure I want to make sure rather that we have gender neutral experiences. So my focus in my entire talk was only to derive gender neutral experiences. Now that could be a product, that could be a software, that could be anything under the sun and in terms of the whole section of women in design I want to bring out another thing there are a lot of women very strong minded and put their hand up and say you know what I will do this but they are not enough and this is a beautiful platform for them to stand, take this opportunity and say I want to do it.