Saranyan Vigraham

After 3 months of a dry patch where blogging disappeared into the horizon, I am back with a personal post about my AC4D journey and answers to some personal questions about why I am in this program. My break from blogging was a conscious decision resulting from some chaos and confusion about my expectations from the program, the divergence, the convergence and sense-making. I contemplated for a bit about posting this as this was more personal than being ac4d related. But, maybe, just a small maybe, it will help someone coming into the program when the number of questions prevail the number of answers.

When I started the program, I wanted to change the world. The passion was intense. I could see myself going out and doing several great things. I had figured out the mental visualization part of achievement. Thus, I began my journey with AC4D, hoping to change the world the way I saw it. The journey was sentimental and passionate. There is a great quote by Mary Aster -

“It’s not good to make sentimental journeys. You see the differences instead of the sameness.”

I realized this very late. But, with every step I was taking,  I started seeing things were different than my expectations. I wanted to work on “information” because that is where my passion is. I did not get a chance to work on that. I was working on a different problem. The frustration caught me unaware. I questioned my reason for being in the program. I thought whether I was doing the same thing that led me into the program in the first place. Was I working on something that I didn’t want to be working on? Ah, the peril with a sentimental journey! I argued with my professors, my project outputs varied in quality. Not that I was bad or anything. It was just that, the sentimental journey was telling me that my goals were different than what I was being taught at school. It was chaotic. At some point, I started doing the assignments and projects because they were part of the curriculum. It had to be, because the emotion of not being able to work on what I wanted to work on, overpowered me.

Life was turbulent and chaotic. I had quit my full time job and was excited to work on some neat ideas. It just wasn’t to be. The Karate Kid story comes to mind. The Miyagis at AC4D were teaching me to wash dishes and scrub floors. I was not there for that. I wanted to learn Karate. There were moments where mind was messing with me and telling me that this was not what I was here for. Struggle and chaos had become part of my everyday project at AC4D. My biggest strength through this process was that chaos has always been my friend and I was familiar with it. There is another nice quote I read from ‘Thus Spake Zarathustra’ -

“One must still have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star”

I never ever realized how true this was. I persisted with chaos, stuck with my schedules and did the best I can. There were multiple epiphanies which gave a great insight into flaws of my own thinking, which could never have come if I had not questioned everything. I never stopped questioning the things I was doing but not for one instance I let the questions completely over power me and take a wrong step. And eventually, things started falling into place over numerous conversations (with Kat, Justin and Jon – thanks guys!). Today was one such moment. After a great guest lecture from Gary of Union Square Ventures (@gcsf), I went into Justin’s office and asked him what I was doing at AC4D. There were things I cared about that I wanted to work on, and I wanted to find out why I was not doing that. Then came the Miyagi moment. For me, Justin will forever remain as  Mr. Miyagi. He showed me how scrubbing floors (not literally) has made me a better person and entrepreneur. He gave me the famous talk about “leap of faith”. It was a great conversation that brings me back to my original quote that I referred to…

“It’s not good to make sentimental journeys. You see the differences instead of the sameness.”

At AC4D, one is taught to be a better entrepreneur. The emphasis is on making you a better person. That is all it is. Every student works on this. It is not the project or idea that matters. It is the spirit. The biggest thing I have gained out of this experience is that, there is a great person (teachers or students) sitting at the other end of the table, listening with attention because they want you to succeed in your dreams. I learned more about myself. Like Steve Jobs said in his famous Stanford speech, “You can only connect the dots looking backwards”. There might be frustration and chaos but if you change the lens with which you view,  you will see a friendly Miyagi teaching you to become a zen master in Karate.

Any future student reading this blog post – Do apply for next year’s program. I guarantee that it will change your life. It has changed mine.

This week’s take away from our project was the importance of client experience. When we synthesized our data, we found that almost everyone we talked to emphasized the importance of client experience on some level. Further, it was interesting to note that people who were associated with administrative activities cared about external perceptions (community awareness) while the people who were line workers didn’t care about it much. On the contrary, the opinions were reversed when thinking about quality control.

One question I keep asking myself is on the importance of client experience. Why is it important for these people? Is it because it makes their lives easier or is it because they carry empathy with what their clients undergo? If a design solution makes client experience easier but does not the lives of the employees, does the weight of this perception change in the above matrix? Don’t know..but will find out.

The message is that through more and more information, more conveniently packaged, more swiftly delivered, we will find solutions to our problems. And so all the brilliant young men and women, believing this, create ingenious things for the computer to do, hoping that in this way, we will become wiser and more decent and more noble. And who can blame them? By becoming masters of this wondrous technology, they will acquire prestige and power and some will even become famous. In a world populated by people who believe that through more and more information, paradise is attainable, the computer scientist is king. But I maintain that all of this is a monumental and dangerous waste of human talent and energy. Imagine what might be accomplished if this talent and energy were turned to philosophy, to theology, to the arts, to imaginative literature or to education? Who knows what we could learn from such people — perhaps why there are wars, and hunger, and homelessness and mental illness and anger.

The above is from Neil Postman, who has a mastery in connecting society and technology. Over the last week or two, my team (Scott and I) has been talking to different people to understand the role of information in understanding and helping homeless population. Information is powerful. Information about homeless is required by the HUD (Housing and Urban Development) and the city to release grants. Information is required by donors to sustain funding. But, what information? Information that is required is more often than not at a superficial level like demographics, age, ethnicity, etc. It would be unfair for me to completely brand it as superficial because an effort is done to understand about mental illness, domestic conditions, financial struggles, etc. But what is done with this information? Can this be used to help the clients themselves?

The power (or information) of data will always come from an associated action. ARCH uses the information to generate reports that will help sustain funds. They seem to be understaffed to do anything beyond that. They are helping people by providing shelter and basic assistance and want to continue doing this. The city or HUD get the reports and are happy that the grants are being used to “help homeless”. Is that sufficient? Can we use the same information to restructure the processes to help accomplish more?

There were several process breakdowns we encountered in our short research phase. This is where can use the information to address these breakdowns. Unfortunately, one breakdown was the way information was gathered. These systems/software to gather information seem to have been built without a deep understanding of the problems faced by clients. There are various aspects of a system that needs to be considered while building any solution. In this particular case, we found out that the interaction and needs of the clients were not given deeper thoughts while designing. For instance, a new client who comes to ARCH has to fill some forms as part of  a basic mandate. While the need for this information is super-critical for managing data, the way it is gathered can end to be a frustrating experience to clients, and in turn, the employees, for whom the system for designed in the first place. Information is critical, but a design method that enables seamless transaction of information is even more critical.