Design Journal

[hardikchandrahas]

Prelude to the IndiaHCI Conference happening on 17-18 December, in Bangalore.  Organised by Srishti Institute of Art and Design, the conference intends to open conversation on interactions beyond the screen. While the common commercial applications are adopted widely for a screen, what interventions/thoughts should one tinker with to trigger interactions beyond the screen.

Conference chair Naveen introduced the conference and his idea of equipping ideas to design beyond the screen. The brief video on ‘Hedonic Haptics‘ body sleeve was an example of speculative design, of how does our body perceive a surrounding , not just through the visual channel.

What does a UX Designer in India today, need to think of, need to know ?

Neha Khandelwal - Enable India, enlightened the audiences of her experiences of working in the social sector setup. Long term access to users enabled her with some very good insights on the research.

I knew my users on a personal level, remembering their name , background and stories. Allowed to me to relate very closely with their problems.

[hardikchandrahas]

Harish Sivaramakrishnan, the man with his fingers in multiple jars ( music band - agam, design team @ google, a father) was here at NID , bangalore sharing his thoughts on his journey as a designer. He took the audience along an interesting ride from his intial days at Adobe, to his recent gig at Google.

His idea stemmed from the fact ; Although design begins to solve a problem, it shouldn’t end there. Designing for users  humans should account for their emotional responses. Good Design must strive to delight the user; provide it something that it does not expects; something which leads to retaining the user.

He spoke about his experiences while buiding various products. As to how the industry daunts a designer questioning his research, data validation; sometimes at the cost of stifling creativity. However one must keep at it, to breakthrough for impact.

Producing this delight in a product’s experience is an introspective process, wherein one often looks within to question and seek acts that bring joy to oneself.

Keep at your art, while you work. Your perspective and thought process opens avenues to channel this delight.

The enthralling session ended with much appreciated rendering of ‘The Boat Song’ from his band Agam.  

[hardikchandrahas]

Sketchnotes from a restaurant crawl (1st time notetaking within an eatery 😬) . Dine X Design, conducted by homecanvas with adi.bengaluru. 

Restaurateurs, Architects, Designers spoke about designing the experience of a restaurant, from its ambience, decor, to its food.

Incredible insights from the folks, special mention for Sahil Mohan for his brilliant breakdown of the BURMA BURMA philosophy and design decisions....Such attention to detail!! 

SLY GRANNY-> FATTY BAO - > BURMA BURMA. 

[hardikchandrahas]

Design Systems - Neel Raj , Product Design @ Flipkart, India. Insights into what goes in building, maintaining, testing and scaling a design system as per local audiences and feedback received.

[hardikchandrahas]

Sketchnotes from the talks on ‘Diversity and Inclusion in Tech’; organised by IXDA + Adobe + Nasscom on the World Interaction Design Day (25th September, 2018). The speaker panel comprised of : Alok Nandi, Aparna Ashok and Neha Khandelwal.

Alok Nandi spoke about the history and origin of IXDA. Interaction Design, as he mentioned stemmed from the idea about trying to design better interactions and experiences for the users. He stirred some thoughts on returning autonomy in contrast to complete automation for the end users.

Takeaway: “ Could Design help public policy in solving Bangalore traffic somehow ? Could we begin to think of designing for the planet ?”

Aparna Ashok presented a fantastic talk about Ethical Considerations one must take while while designing products and services today. She put forth this frame work consisting : privacy, security, inclusivity, behaviour modification, agency and authenticity; to keep in mind. What data can we gather ? What does the user own ? How do we include someone considerately? How much do we tweak/tamper someone ’s behaviour ?

Takeaway: “ETHICS , as the steering wheel for our Design”

Neha Khandelwal from Enable India, shed some light on designing for individuals with disabilities. How one mustn’t think of them as edge case users /consider them for modified solutions; rather approach an inclusive design pattern which makes them feel as equal as an abled person. She discussed the work being done at Enable, India and put forth some learnings such as ‘The sense of community is very strong with disabled individuals - they seek solace in people going through a similar state’

Takeaway: “Platforms and services should be designed with disabilities as the focus user . Simple bits like a web page’s design works drastically differently for someone with visual impairment.”

[hardikchandrahas]

Dharmesh addressed the folks at NID, Blr about gaming the value of design in business. He spoke about the structure of digital business in India, mainly product and service domains. How does one go about evaluating a business ?  The talk focussed on how we as individuals could see the possibility and importance of design and reap. roles in those said business. The stages of evolution a business could go through, forcing its product to tweak is form and change with times.

The talk veered towards ‘how do you go about picking a place for a designer to work ?’. Aspects such as the importance of business’s domain , its team, individuals and the past merits of them came forth. Definition of the role and its place in the company for personal growth was brought about.

His final key points addressed the importance and vitality of side projects - Dharmesh is the leader for IXDA, Bengaluru Chapter and helps organise Design UP, conference on the side :)

[hardikchandrahas]

Data Representation in IOT Devices - Rasagy Sharma (08 Aug, 2018)

Rasagy took a class on data visualization and representation in IOT devices. Interesting examples were discussed such as Fitbit’s use of 5 LEDs for conveying 5 different variables (sync, call, mesaage, step tracking n more), NEST’s approach of layering base interactions on the device and advanced ones on a network of connected devices (mobile).

The latter half of the half involved thinking about data variables to be used while designing different concept for smart tech integration in cities, agriculture, industry, daily life (more categories on the libelium site).

A good segway into smart tech ethics also came up, “Instead of what all could be smart, ask what all should be smart?”, “Smartness for the heck of it , or actual problem solving”

[hardikchandrahas]

Google+IXDA - Designing for India, 2018 :  Sketchnotes from an enriching talk session 'Designing for India', org. by IXDA @google blr office.

1) @muzm09 - spoke about gaining and sustaining user's trust while building products;examples quoted from her exp. In building Neighbourly and Tez 2) @viditaatrey spoke about his learnings while building a seller platform for the local Indian @meeshoapp ; how continuous feedback and delivering promises instantly aids in building trust. 3) @baboonzero spoke about the angle of privilege one must keep in mind while building products(interesting questionnaire brought it to light) . "We don't design for India, but for a very small fraction of the country." 4) @garencheckley spoke about tackling gender equity in products, while collecting feedback, localizing to gain user's trust (more in notes).

[hardikchandrahas]

High Resolution Podcasts, 2017 - A podcast series interviewing the design leads of some of the biggest design centric companies of the world (Airbnb, Uber, Spotify, IBM, Behance, Google, Microsoft, IDEO...and more). Do watch to see how such design focussed companies began their efforts in their space to shape and lead it currently.

The above notes are from the first interview, featuring Katie Dill (Director of Experience, Airbnb).

[hardikchandrahas]

MetaRefresh,2016 - Annual UX Conference held in Bangalore, India. The folks at hasgeek conduct this conference focussed around user experience design, front end technologies. design methodologies; wherein industry leaders share their learnings and approaches to solving such domain problems.

[hardikchandrahas]

Data Cuisine - Eyeo 2016, a fantastic talk on visualizing data using food as a variable. Moritz Stefaner, runs the experiment wherein they conduct experiments visualizing local data with its respective cuisine. 

Watched the talk online on Vimeo, found the talk extremely enriching and interesting :)

[hardikchandrahas]

Sketchnotes - Notes from previous web talks and articles