Jul 21, 2019
UX & bagels. One of the more valuable UX sessions/workshops I’ve been to in Singapore. Not just because they had bagels from @twomenbagelhouse 😂 Really good content, structure, and conversations.
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UX & bagels. One of the more valuable UX sessions/workshops I’ve been to in Singapore. Not just because they had bagels from @twomenbagelhouse 😂 Really good content, structure, and conversations.
Singapore Art Book Fair
After more than 6 months of walking past this “funky ass mirror”, just realised today that it is Anish Kapoor’s sculpture.
Ranjitha Kumar’s work overlaps a lot with what we do at our company. I was already familiar with her work in fashion search/discovery, and in this talk, I learnt about some new directions in her work: “interaction mining” (some things that are more directly applicable for UX design processes), and “taste mining” (an interesting approach to fashion discovery).
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She introduced tools that her team has built that are super useful for smaller companies and UX teams that don’t have the time and resources to run large scale user tests. It’s like open source usability and usage analytics, making data driven design more accessible - allowing more designers to leverage data to build better products.
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She also briefly talked about the similarities between data-driven design thinking being applied to product design and ML design. I left making a note to learn more on how to apply design skills and techniques to ML driven tech. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
#HCI #UX #datadrivendesign
A couple of nights ago, at an UX event, the presenter recommended this book.
The next day, I serendipitously came across it at my coworking space (while waiting for the water to boil for my tea, I was looking through the bookshelf).
Tonight I brought it home and opened the first page. There is a line on the third paragraph that is very similar to a comment/feedback I received last weekend 😂
I think this is a sign that I should read this book.
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At an interview with Nick Rellas - the 29 year old cofounder of Drizly (the largest online alcohol marketplace in the US). During the talk he mentioned something about the immediacy of alcohol purchases and why Drizly made it a goal to deliver products within an hour. He shared a stat: that something like 80% of alcoholic beverages are consumed within 8hrs of purchase. 😂 This is actually quite true of my own experience.
His 7 year journey and his approach towards failures/obstacles was partially summarised with an analogy - that it was like driving a bumper car. If he bumped into obstacles, he would keep bumping till he could get through it or bounce off it and find a way to get around - not looking at obstacles as a setback, but something that is inherently part of the process. One example was how he had to go through 10 months of hearing “no” from investors.
After closing a 30 million dollar funding round, he has recently stepped down from his position as CEO, and is in a state of being a “recovering entrepreneur”, thinking about his next project, and it turns out he is actually a member at the same coworking space as me.
Grateful for all the learning opportunities in Boston. So far this month, there have been two talks at General Assembly Boston - one on “The rise of the corporate innovation labs” and another was a panel discussion with designers in business leadership roles. It’s super helpful to be in a room with more experienced designers talking about what they are doing, sharing ideas, and giving advice.⠀⠀⠀
What the two talks had in common this month, was the importance of cross-team collaboration. Another point that resonated with me was the importance of keeping one foot in the business side of things, but also continuously asking what we are trying to solve for who (maintaining a user-centric design attitude).
Also mentioned during these talks was the recent McKinsey report on “The business value of design”. (There have been other designers who have criticised this report along with another McKinsey article on “Ten design practices”, for oversimplifying and trying to find and define a formula for something that is meant to be more organic. But I think there are some good points and is worth a read). ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
#uxdesign #experiencedesign #brandexperience #generalassembly #designers #gaboston
Winnie the Pooh exhibition - learnt about what an important role the illustrator, E.H. Shepard played in the success of Winnie the Pooh. From inspiring Milne with traits and behaviour of the characters through his drawings, to the extent to which his page layouts influenced the sentence structures and affected the way the story is read. #winniethepooh #poohbear #ehshepard #mfa #mfaboston