DESIGN FOR THE NEXT BILLION

A few days back I had been to an energy development company selling products for the Bottom of Pyramid consumers. I was invited by the development manager to take a look at the styling work that served no purpose for the consumer. The brightly lit office had a corner section for storing reference products. There were some four to five products based on two platforms specifically targeted for the rural markets. The products were originally designed by engineers and later on handed over to some freelancing product designers to make the product sell-able. In course of the project, the manager expected some ground breaking designs to be delivered soon but was constantly updated with beautiful looking renders and presentations. Four months down the line, the project was half scrapped and the original designs were restored.

Principles of design Colour and Harmony

Design teaches you wonderful things. The very first book every design student reads is lateral thinking. The very first lesson in design is color and harmony. Beautiful things do matter but we have to take design beyond mere looks and feel to the current buzz word- Innovation. There is no tried and tested method in design. Intuition is a major factor that drives successful designers to look into the unknown and craft beautiful products. Now while intuition does wonders for a designer, an organization cannot create a design framework based on spiritual theories. Companies hire freelancing designers for cost-effective styling but do not foresee the trap of mere styling over innovation. I saw the existing products redesigned with a beautiful camouflage but the product as a whole served no purpose beyond looking good. The manager was equally disappointed and had ‘made up his mind’ over product designers.

After doing few rounds of the newly designed products, I saw the poster of a village woman happily cooking on an innovative chulla. I was curious to know if any Customer Relationship Managment tools or user experience theories are ever used by the companies for the BoP segment. After I left the office, I spent a few days researching this topic and gathered some insights. Products that are designed specially for the BoP segment are sold thorough a network of local sellers that double up as sympathetic family advisors to the consumer. Such products form a platform of various services instead of being a single usable product. In contrast, branded products made for the BoP consumer is sold heavily on value proposition and demonstrated marketing. The research also made me realize how few tools existed for the BoP market, that companies could utilize in order to build relationships and loyalty with their customers and offer them a well design user experience.

A case of Innovation- Clever and fun

A few days later I was brainstorming with my colleagues on the existing design framework that looked quite outdated for the latest design trends. We were content with placing technology as the driving force for innovation but this principle seems obsolete for BoP products. In general terms, introducing technology in an existing system means feature addition and hence increasing the overall cost factor. Consumers enjoy buying feature rich products but will be resisted to pay those extra bucks. To find a sweet-spot between features and cost, we looked at technology from a different angle, from the perspective of combining features at a reduced cost. Of the many terminologies used for frugal design, I define the feature stripping process as addition of addition of features over reduced platforms. Product platforms show up brightly on the balance sheet but having multiple platforms will have a negative impact on the future growth.

Thinking on lines of BoP, I attended a garage conference for IT startup’s. Present in the conference were middle managers trying hard to convert their ideas and codes into money-making balance sheets. A prominent topic in the discussion was heading towards the adaptability of cloud services for small-scale business. Cloud services are no longer a thing of the future. Many interesting features and practical pricing has changed the tone from why cloud? to how cloud? People are curious to know the innumerable possibilities of cloud based computing applied to their enterprise ideas. Some of the interesting ideas in this conference came from professionals who have considerable rural life experience and would like to launch an array of financial and social services using low-cost technology.

Development in rural India

In the current scenario, ‘design for the other 90%’ revolves around conventional theories of product design and creative engineering. The fundamental idea of designing a low-cost BoP product is to improve the quality of life in that segment. I had a second thought in this regard. What happens a consumer who moves one level up from the BoP segment? Well, that will bring another set of thought process but such a change is what the emerging markets desire.

VENICE – TRAVEL WISH LIST

There is something about water that calms you down. A gentle flowing, clear water river makes your soul flow along the rocky-life-like bed. Venice is a city that takes the number one spot on my travel wish list and is one of those places that you should visit before you die.

I have seen the city of Venice through the many travel catalogues and Hollywood flicks, each one describes the place with a different poem. Following is a video of this wonderful city shown in the most spectacular fashion. I salute the efforts of this wonder person Joerg Niggli responsible for this work.

TAILING A ROYAL ENFIELD

I was studying in the ninth grade when I first saw The Motorcycle Diaries. The story revolved around two friends riding across South America on a vintage motorcycle and counting the woman who fall for their pick-up lines. Sounds like a perfect life right? How about doing all this on a Norton 500? For most of the people of my age, bikes like the Norton 500 maybe a new word. We have grown up in an era that was heavily influenced by mass production and design was slowly moving towards a global trend. Now what is not alien to my age is the concept of road trips. You know, every person is frustrated at some point or the other and wants to run away from life. Road trips, to some is freedom, to some is a way of life and to others like me, it’s something that happened.

It’s good to have like-minded people working in the next cubical. Almost two weeks after I joined PackSys Global, I met two colleagues who turned out to be hard-core bikers. What do I mean by hard-core? We think in terms of km/hr, speak about engine oil during lunch and write poems on driving under the sun. One fine day, an employee from my company set out on a world tour and had the details shared on the mail. His planning was truly awesome and we had a live example of what is to be done next. We formed a not official yet corporate biking group and planned our first trip out. Our managers were supportive too. One day I had the project schedule adjusted to ‘carry-on’ with our road trip. We could not make it to that road trip because of official reasons but the group stayed on. We named the group as Jailbirds, designed a logo and currently have thee members with no further applications.

Jailbird- our biking group logo

Jailbirds was the name coined by someone on the net that was noticed by Rakesh, the first biker. Rakesh rides a Pulsar 220 and has a GPS too. He is the most famous biker in our office and gives free advice on music systems. As the group’s social-media manager, Rakesh is basically responsible for tagging photos on Facebook and this is where Vinay steps in. Vinay is our second biker and the group’s project manager. He can ride a Classic 500 from Bangalore to Mumbai and does bring along sweets too. His bike is most celebrated in our office and thus takes the centre position in any photo. The third biker in the group is Krishna yeah the one who writes this blog. In this group, I am the creative head (see the logo) and that gives me the flexibility to drive around with a million excuses to stop at the next milestone.

Now if you form a group for road trips, you are expected to go on a road trip. Looking at our reputation, if everything goes unplanned, we first head out to Daman and Diu on the 28 of April. Let me remind you of the seriousness of this project with some examples. For the first time in two months, I am not going home for a weekend. We have serviced our bikes and that includes a second oil change for my bike in under two months. Rakesh has switched over to his stock silencer and is receiving kudos on Facebook. To take things one step ahead of the usual biking maniac, we are getting the group branded by a graphic design consultant and will soon have a new visual language. All this for a three member biking group? Well, we have a philosophy: There are two kinds of people, one who do things and the others who make it large.

Driving behind a Classic 500

I was not a person into vintage bikes but the classics have an attitude which I appreciate. I don’t say the Japanese make boring motorcycles but most of their bikes look cloned. Every evening I ride my super-silent bike behind the thudding classic 500 and my heart is in perfect sync with its mechanics. I am sure everyone from the group is equally excited for our first road trip.

THE PRIVATE WORLD

It’s been a few months I arrived in Mumbai.

I tried to devote ample time to write about this place but I have to admit that few words written out of casual sight-seeing will only do injustice to this maximum city. Every evening after office, I would wonder about the night ahead and hop around places to find a residence. I lived at around five locations in a span of two weeks and was enough to teach me a lesson in the ‘richness’ of this maximum city. This post is about a weekend trip to my home town in Pune that was followed an incidental visit to my ‘engineering temple’.

Days after moving to Mumbai, weekend trips to Pune were almost being a norm. Every time I arrived home, social networking was high on the agenda. I was almost living a planned weekend when one evening, I decided to break-off and refresh my good old memories. I visited the Shiv temple for the evening prayers. The temple visit was by far spiritual until one incident happened, an incident that triggered a series of thoughts about being humans. To get a few glimpses of the temple, below is a video I had shot a few years, back during my engineering days at the temple.

My engineering temple

Temples in India have amazing curing power. There is something about these places that calm you down like a thirsty traveler quenching his thirst from an ancient river. I entered the temple to offer prayers at feet of Lord Shiva. What I saw at the premises was touching. A small boy, at the age of an innocent human being was offering his prayers to an idol outside the premises of the temple. I started my camera to capture this amazing subject.

With sheer curiosity and ample fear, he was constantly looking at my camera from the corner of his eyes. My silent movements did make him uncomfortable but he refused to shy away from his rituals. Next, he grabbed the idol by its head and learned it forward to pull-out a box of match stick hidden behind the idol. Swiftly he lit the camphor with the soiled match sticks and chanted a prayer. Within no time, the match sticks were at home, camphor had burnt-out, the idol had sinked in darkness and the boy was out of sight. He by-passed the temple idol and ran towards the exit. I was passively watching the incident.

Private Temple

That evening, I arrived home with a completely different mindset. The temple incident raised some serious thoughts on our social living. Why would someone of his age worships his ‘private idol’ kept at a corner of the temple? What conditions made him act like that? How would that person behave in other situations? These are some of the questions that triggered my thoughts about the private world we live in. Sure, there is a lot to think, a lot to discuss and a lot to share about our own lives that are contented within the private walls and the private world we live-in.

AN ANDROID MAKEOVER

Finally, another graphic designing work. Months after completing my blog book, I got a needful
opportunity to do a wallpaper for the small screen. My android phone was pre-installed
with some bad graphic wallpapers and what a better way than to make your own, original
wallpaper. No doubt the phone is a best-buy in its segment. A value for money product,
the Samsung Galaxy y however is a bit let down in battery life, camera performance and
screen quality. I used the phone for a month with some minor customization but the android
experience was missing. Finally I decided to take matters in my own hands and give my phone
a graphical makeover. Having some knowledge in graphics and the confidence gained after
publishing a blog book pushed me further to try out an original work.

Android Wallpaper

Now what is special about this wallpaper? An output this simple would have been completed
in minutes without much thinking. How will this abstract artwork give my phone a makeover?
Well, I may not be the best person to judge the graphical maturity in this work. The wallpaper
however is designed with reference to a set of measurements and a coarse observation of my
usage patterns for over a month.

Let me start by explaining you some of the details. The phone has a low screen resolution
which means the colour black will never be displayed as black. The background colour of the
wallpaper is 70% black and that makes the screen look-alike under the sun and in low light
conditions. Two distinct colours orange and green are used as linear rows and fragmented
columns. The graphical pattern made out of these two colours best compliment any application
shortcuts. The long linear rows act like guidelines and reassemble our finger movements while
flipping through the menu. Applying the image on the android home screen is a skilled task.
You need to figure out the right position of the linear bands that basically compliment the
app icons.

A few days after the image showed up on my Android, I have gone one step further to apply the
same language across my social network. Next on my list is to map the different graphical
languages I come across everyday on the streets of Mumbai. So is graphic designing my next
milestone? Well the answer is ‘no’; I am enjoying the ‘Typo-mania’ and for the moment, it’s
not taking on professionally.

A PROFESSING CHANGE

From a Mechanical Engineer developing spiral wind turbines to a Product Designer publishing an online Blog book, the past few years have been crazy, versatile yet immersing. Days after professing a profile change and finally joining Packsys Global as a Technical Writer, it’s time to take a backseat and give a deep thought to the brighter side of Product Design.

Around 2010, as a basic qualifier for Mechanical Engineering, I was well versed with design of basic machine elements. Working a few months in Automation, I had designed and commissioned an Industrial Washing Machine before joining Onio Design- a workplace where emotions rule over logic. Onio has been one of those high performance places where carefully crafted, next generation products make a headway into the future. Working here for the next thirteen months, I was pushed to think beyond my mental walls by a profession glorified by thought leadership.

Being part of the service industry has its own pros and cons. On the brighter side, you got to learn the best of things that are essential for progress and survival while on the darker side, the client always has the last say. I never understood the design business. It’s difficult to have a business model where the core service is to compete with a formula that gets updated every fortnight. Here is an industry that can demonstrate growth with all the unusual methods but is badly let down with the tried and tested methods of analytical thinking.

As a Product Design Engineer, I worked on a client base spanning across different sectors that badly need innovation to either sustain growth or merely survive in the industry. My first big break came along in an industry I least expected: designing a LED lamp with an ugly-looking heat sink extrusion. Next was redesigning the legendary car Ambassador followed by some products in the consumer electronics division before finally moving on to retailing a series of knowledge based products.

Now what sounds like professionally enduring was also socially enchanting. Having worked for more than a year at Onio, I never had a clear distinction between the words ‘friends’ and ‘professionals’. Going by the definitions, professionals meet at the workplace and strive to achieve a common goal. Well, Indian companies have always gone beyond this definition to create a perfect social workplace and Onio, with its unique organisational structure, does just that with a pinch of design thinking. Of the immense knowledge and practical experience gained in this niche field, I wonder what is in store for the future. For the moment, I will share a note from my journal: Success is not a prodigy of the past, it’s an outcome of your actions in the future.

A GOODLUCK CHAI

How many planets are there in the universe?

If I give you two credits for this question, you would probably answer nine but if I insist for an honest figure, would you answer this question? Of the innumerable questions we have answered every day, do we really justify the questions? One day I was asked a question very obvious to my profession, a question that would have been answered in very simple words but a sense of responsibility zipped my lips and returned an innocent smile. This post is about a simple question and an incomplete answer.

Five days into the New Year, Ajay- my ‘neighbor at office’ clicked me with an idea to buy a personal diary. The idea seemed fascinating and the next morning we planned to meet at the hustle-bustle F C Road. As usual, I arrived on time; Ajay was late and my only option was to enjoy a cup of lime tea from the nearby Goodluck café. I entered the delightful place and managed to find a comfortable spot. After having ‘my cup of tea’, I swiftly moved towards the cash counter only to find myself waiting behind a giant personality.

A closer look and it turns out that this person had offered 500 bucks for the 10 bucks chai and is now searching his leather wallet for smaller numbers to pay off his bill. Now a little heard philosophy says that 10 bucks is all that it takes to make a friend and so I ‘humbly’ offered to pay his bill. As unexpected, the person was moved. He blushed at the help and gave me a counter offer: “Let’s eat something and have another cup of tea. I will pay the bill”. I did not resist. Speaking over another cup of tea, I introduced myself as a product designer- who is ‘well versed to design beautiful looking products’. A few more questions about what kind of products and then comes the golden question: “So you belong to a profession that looks for problems with everything?” and there goes my humble smile.

It would really be a stupid to answer this question and convince the gentleman to look at design in a better way. In almost every introduction, I have defined design as an answer to a particular problem and tried to portray every other product with a grave deficit. In terms of business, a design ideology is probably the best answer to gain significant market share and/or maintain your present market share. A recent management study of a big corporation stresses the need for Disruptive innovation to be a part of the core business. I would specifically like to point out two examples that demonstrate the manifestation of design on everyday living.

Simple to use ECG Machine

First is a less than 500 dollar, portable, battery powered medical device that is used to get instant prints of the ECG reports. The device is carried to remote villages by scouting doctors and can be operated by almost anyone. This is the best part of the device: It can be operated by almost anyone. At the front end of this device are two buttons named ‘ON/OFF’ and ‘PRINT’. You start the device, take down the readings, the print button glows to give you an indication for printing, press this button and you get a print. The amount of ideation that has gone into designing this device speaks volumes about the maturity in the development team. Such innovations in the health care sector have served the simple purpose to save a human life. Along with this example, when you include words like Bottom of the Pyramid, Emerging Markets, Sustainability, that is where the business of design steps in.

Another prominent design example comes from the barren lands of Africa where drinking water is luxury. While looking for possible answers to the question- Why do thirsty humans resist the temptation of drinking water from a soiled pond?, someone was wise enough to design a Life tube. LifeStraw is a product that looks more like a regular drinking straw on steroids. One end of this product is dipped into soiled water and clean, drinkable water is sucked from the other end. There are various stages of purification built into the body of the straw. Now I have not experienced this product first hand but I am sure the very idea of such a product can only be induced through the principles of design thinking.

In the first few lines of this post I asked some questions and tried to rationalize the answers. In the following paragraphs, I explained how two different products made a considerable difference to the end user. Many factors including the economic downturn and slowdown in the emerging markets will push manufacturing to the limits where clone looking products are undesirable. Probably this will be the time when design will no longer be the part of a solution but will be the only solution.

2012, A SECOND GUESS

The primary source of information on a bright Sunday morning are various NEWS channels that portray a very horrific image of the society around us. The language of the same content coming from a financial broadcast drifts drastically to optimism in hopes to play the bull and the bear game. One such broadcast had roped in some top management gurus to tarot card the future. “India is an idea that will take off this year”. In this thirty minutes program, the gentleman devoted twenty minutes to ideate an optimistic view for the leap year while the ad agencies squeezed out ten minutes to sell a million things possible. Two topics that strongly emerged from this discussion were the introduction of FDI in India and the impact of new products on the growth rate in these recessionary times. Following are my views on these issues.

I have been reading many articles on the impact of FDI in India. I am happy for giants like Starbucks and IKEA entering the Indian market. I hope Starbucks does influence the Indian political system in some way but IKEA is going to be a game changer in the interior industry. Apart from this, how does FDI revolutionize everyday buying?

The first thing I recall reading FDI is the one time famous retail chain- Subhiksha. Subhiksha was the first place where my mother learnt about the discounts being offered on the MRP. What she thought was a fascinating concept is actually a headache to the local ‘kirana’ stores. A few months later when the local Subhiksha stores started winding up, the local ‘kirana’ stores saw every Tom, Dick and Harry ask for a bargain. But if Subhiksha was such a fascinating place, why did the retail chain shut down? Let me take you on a demographic ride around my residential area.

Retail Revolution in India

Let’s fix the ‘zero mile’ at the entrance of my residence. Travel some miles to the left and you see an Infosys like campus called ‘Big Bazaar’, take the second right and a sober looking ‘D mart’ welcomes you. A few blocks down the road you see a place crowded with everyday vegetables and everyday people; that’s Reliance fresh. After all the hustle and bustle when you finally return home, keep an eye to the left; you will probably stop at the wine selling ‘Godrej Natura’. I am not sure what exactly will FDI do in the retail sector. There may be some kind of revolution in everyday buying but I am sure my mother will not dump her local kirana card for some loyalty cards program.

Another subject interesting about this century is the rise of Africa. Slowly and steadily, the ‘first world’ has realized the direct connection of the population with customers. Now what do I mean by the rise of Africa? Let’s take an Indian example. I was born towards the end of 1988 and by mid 2008 I had a simple idea to be a millionaire. Thanks to engineering text books, crazy ideas came to me effortlessly. So what was the idea? To collect one rupee from every Indian that would make me rich by a million dollars. Now what seems like a simple plan is actually a complicated business with competition coming from places as far as America. One billion plus population with nearly 700 million customers ready to buy an affordable, feature rich product, and that’s a market twice as large as U.S.

Bottom of the pyramid is a term long used in business and currently being reinforced with design thinking for the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China). We have seen giant companies like GE and Philips come up with affordable products sold with low margins and a strategy relying heavily on the foundations of scalability. These products are designed for the emerging markets and compete with similar products launched by the ‘local entrepreneurs’ that specialize in catching up with the competition. The only way a product can survive and/or maintain its market share is by incorporation the right ‘looks’ and the ‘desired’ features. This is when Design Research powered by Product Design will slowly make way into the boardroom.

BOP Products in Local Markets

Way back in 2004, I was shopping at an Electronic outlet and found myself staring at a brightly lit glass cube with some four-grand, two-inch gizmo inside. This was a Sony USM 32 (MB) SE pen drive that sounded more like an American sergeant on mission. Eight years down the line, prices for a pen drive have reduced by a factor of eight and are usually stacked in plastic buckets and sold around the cash counter. Growth can either be achieved by improving your products and services or by introducing new products and services. Now some ‘curve’ in the management theory will stop you from launching new products under such volatile conditions and respecting this theory, the only option remains is refinement. So how much growth do you expect by selling the same old products with new brochure? In years from now, targeting the mass market with refined products will not define growth. Growth will be achieved by platform based innovations that would make a feature rich product affordable in the mass market.

2011, A REVIEW

The first note in my office book comes under the title ‘Prakash Gyaan’ and goes like this: “Buy a set of screw drivers to explore and analyze everyday products”. Turn a couple of pages and the title changes to ‘Manoj Gyaan’ with a note saying: “Story telling ability is the most important feature in a product”. These are few of the innumerable sentences that make up the person I am; 2011 a year when I finally made it from a roll-call to a pay-roll.

My Working Desk

So what are the two best things I learnt in 2011? Let’s start with an everyday example at work. I had designed a very good looking product, rendered in three different angles and presented on five different slides. I thought the work was good enough until the pros came up with a twenty slide presentation showing quality stuff. As the brainstorming session heated up with strong arguments, we soon found ourselves slipping into an act of ‘Ashtray Speaking’. Ashtray Speaking is an act of sharing a number of thoughts and possibilities without jumping on to the conclusion. Unlike Lateral Thinking where the emphasis is to generate more ideas, in Ashtray Speaking you pick up incomplete sentences, enrich them with your own thoughts and pass it on to others and generate more keywords. It’s more like a debate where you try to build on other sentences without ruling out the possibilities. The exercise is a holistic approach to get the most out of a cross functional team.

As the brainstorming session came to an end, few keywords triggered the debate about the strength of our company. “As a design company, we stand out by… (I like the new client logo but the colors could have been a little more vibrant)…and work with the management to propagate design thinking.” I seem to have missed out the most important part about our company. With no more thinking, I pen down a note under the title ‘Manoj Gyaan’: “Propagate Design Thinking”. Design Thinking is the second best thing that happened in 2011.

Design Thinking (DiT) is a global buzzword coined by the well articulating designers. As the standard definition goes, Design Thinking (DiT) refers to a philosophy where design transforms the way products, services, processes and even strategies are developed. Unlike Strategic Thinking (SiT) that is mainly governed by analysis, DiT takes a creative approach to problem solving. A number of companies have demonstrated sizable growth by channeling DiT into their core decisions. Apple is a superstar example of transformation using DiT but then Apple is perhaps the best example of everything under the sun. Now if are thinking that DiT is the next big thing after Steve Jobs, hold on. What DiT utterly lacks is Steve Jobs.

Apple launched a number of mind-blowing products thanks to Steve and his team. At the front end, what looks like a good product is also a perfect blend of DiT and SiT. A number of times, Design insights and Strategic Solutions cross each other in decision-making. Strategies have been well institutionalized in the core management that has strong analytical skills while Design lacks a holistic approach and is not at the core of the business. So while every other cell phone manufacturer was busy designing the perfect keypad for the upcoming models, Steve had a different question: Why do we need a keypad? Its companies like Apple that blends the conventional management system with aspects of ‘Thought Leadership’ to design products that sell across the segments and redefine strategies.

Onio Design

With a number of design firms practicing Strategic Design Management, it would not be surprising to see design have a say in business. Early 2012, with the arrival of top international design houses like IDEO, Frog Design and Landor Associates, Indian companies will have a good time shopping. What works for Onio Design is our understanding of India, an international client experience and we stand out (you know I missed out those sentences) by propagating design thinking.

AN ENTROPIC THEORY

Many of you may think, like I did, that job, money and family bring in a lot of big questions. Well this weekday, I asked myself one of those really big questions: ‘What is the meaning of life’?. The big question seemed to have a profound effect on my thinking process as I soon found myself dusting engineering text books and looking for physical logics in terms of ‘System’, ‘Surrounding’ and ‘Energy’. In this quest to find out the ultimate answer, Newtons third law of motion seemed appropriate: “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.”

Let us suppose throwing a ball is action. The reaction to this action is the displacement of the ball from one point to another. Now if throwing the ball is action, from where does this action initiate? Let us say throwing the ball is a reaction caused by the action of various impulses in the nervous system. Experiments have proved that nervous impulses are a form of electric signals generated by the conscious energy that travel from the generative cells to the receptor cells. Well from the first law of thermodynamics, “Energy can neither be created nor be destroyed”. So the conscious energy derives its state from a universal energy that governs the laws of nature. To put all the above statements in a layman’s term, the universal energy governs the will power of an individual.

The Neuron Impulses (Visualization)

This theory sounds funny. I said the universal energy governs the will power of an individual. If this is true, are we just puppets in the hands of ‘God-knows-who’? How is this possible? If you look at the facts, our will power is responsible for the worst calamities in nature; the over hyped global warming, the rise against corruption in India, the recent euro zone crises and even worst: the downfall of Microsoft! Does the nature governed universal energy try to destroy itself. My theory seems to have some major flaws. For a moment, lets us take the universal energy out of this picture and introduce a new term called entropy. Entropy is defined as the state of randomness. In other words, Entropy is the quality of energy in use.

As the Entropy increases, the state of randomness increases which in turn increases the electrical impulses in the nervous system. The electrical impulses raise the level of mental activity and then you know the classic answer of why a blacksmith gets a better sleep than a businessman? So am I concluding that Entropy is an equivalent of the universal energy? Well in short: No. In my understanding, the ability of processing random information and converting them in a structured format requires that certain amount of willful energy which is entropy. Thus the external conditions impose a state of randmoness and hence Entropy is a reaction to the action of the environment.

The Entropy - Impulses System (Visualization)

In short, the environment acts and we react accordingly. Now finally I seem to arrive at a logical conclusion that will never be mailed to the Science Journal.