Finding the pathway to effectively introduce Design Thinking to an organization

The business value of design has been established by numerous industry reports that suggest the outperformance of companies that have a high design maturity. There could be many approaches to introduce design thinking methodologies to an organization. For some organizations, the leadership takes the initiative and seeks external intervention, while for others, the designers scattered at the base level might try to bring about change from their humble position. Many organizations struggle to find an approach that’s best for them to transform into an innovation machine.

Essential Tools for User Research

User research is an integral part of design process. When a team conducts user research, it focuses on understanding user behaviors, needs, and motivations and this understanding helps to design better user experience.

At the same time, user research is extremely complex activity. Not only a team needs to select a proper user research technique (or techniques), but the team also needs to summarize research findings and make them actionable.

In this article, I’ve listed essential tools that will help a team to maximize the outcome from user research.

eCommerce for Grocery Shopping

In the digital world we live in, ideas are easily lost or forgotten. Sticky-notes are physically visible on walls and live on as tangible byproducts for many UX processes. Seeing all the different ideas in different handwritings and colors listed on the same wall creates a sense of diversity and equality, and reinforces the sense of belonging to the team. Sticky-notes are not the work of any one individual — they are the visible evidence of a group effort. In this context…”A Sticky Situation”

I had my first group collaboration with two talented designers. We worked to design an e-commerce platform for high quality groceries.

The technology related design industry is far reaching and all encompassing. At its broadest interpretation, it includes everything from interface designers working on singular features to vice presidents of product design working on an entire fleet of handheld devices. In more recent years, the design industry has risen to prominence for the role it’s played in creating widely used technology products such as iOS devices (i.e the iPhone 11) and conversational user interfaces (i.e the Amazon Echo Dot).

There are four basic types of innovation depending on the problem that needs solving.

The 4 types of innovations are incremental innovation, adjacent innovation, breakthrough innovation, and radical innovation.

It is the main classification used today, but not the only one. In reality, inventions become innovations based on their impact on the user, the market, technology, or business.

Definition of Innovation

The term innovation is polysemous and therefore difficult to define. However, an innovative product or service shares a certain number of irrefutable common characteristics. There is always :

To Write Lucrative Blogposts, Focus on Reader Experience

A tried and tested formula to make your writing really popular, really fast.

I started writing on Medium two months ago. I managed to receive 27k views, 15k reads, and 825 fans in my second month. My curation rate is 75%, and I’m a top writer in Food and Health. (I didn’t rattle off these stats to brag — as you’ll see later.)

I’ve succeeded in engaging readers by elevating my articles’ reading experience.

Words can improve your conversion. Here’s how.

CALL TO ACTION (CTA). People easily leave your website because you lost their attention. It’s your job as a UI designer, web designer, developer, founder, CEO, -insert fancy title here- to grab that attention and hold it. And a change in words can accomplish that.

1. Beta’s don’t own only 1 CTA text

Freecharge is a popular Indian digital marketplace for financial instruments ranging from savings, payments, insurance, investment and lending. This case study revolves around its iOS app’s offers section.

Research | PART I (Desk Research Data)

• CONTEXT STUDY

Mental Health and Design: Red Flags and How to Deal with Them

To all the creatives struggling with mental health

Designers are a sort of people who are creating with all of their hearts and are often associating their work with themselves. Yet a concept of “beauty” is always subjective until we test it and collect feedback from a subsequent amount of users. Until that time, designers are emotionally naked before everybody who wants to share their opinion on their work. It doesn’t matter if it is an animated gif, a user interface of a new iPhone app, or a new brand style for a city.

People who work in arts-related jobs were up to four times more likely to die by suicide. (source)

Your first job is always special.

It’s a manifestation of your four years of education, where you learn how to handle clients, how to work with colleagues — both the ones you love and the ones you hate, you make mistakes, and also learn that those mistakes are not the end of the world, though it may seem like that at that time.

You’ll always remember your first job, not only because it holds a special place in your heart, but also because it teaches you your first set of life lessons as an adult.

I recently moved on from my first job and I’ve had the time to reflect on my learnings.

1) Don’t get intimidated by smarter people

There will always be someone smarter than you in the room. And if there isn’t, you are in the wrong room.

Challenge express para diseñar el dashboard en versión App de un neobanco.

Dada la situación de desorden mundial con la invasión del Covid-19, muchas personas están dando el salto al mundo digital con pértiga. Lo que antes requería un proceso meditado para incorporar la tecnología en el día a día, ahora se ha visto forzado a acelerarse por las necesidades que requiere el confinamiento, y eso ha sido especialmente positivo para las start ups financieras.

Add these terms to your designer toolbox

Usability and User Experience cannot be separated. We often see stakeholders using them interchangeably. They don’t use the term “Usable” directly, but whatever they refer is closely associated with the usability of the product. Learning these usability terms will be helpful especially for the new designers to create a shared understanding among the team members. It will also enable the stakeholders to provide proper and constructive feedback instead of vague and not so helpful ones. These are not just terms — some of them are principles, methods and processes. Let’s dive in

I have used abbreviations for sources in some places.

In this article I’ll go through all the steps I followed to make effective the onboarding of a personal finance app.

I got this challenge after I applied for a job as UX Writer. It was my first application since I started learning about User Experience.

I thought it’d be nice to share my process and findings. Let’s start?

The Problem

The mobile app onboarding needs a refresh. The version I analysed consisted of 4 steps in total: none of them could be skipped and the user needed to go through all of them to make it to the last one. Eventually, they would be able to press the green button “Start” and create their account.

Closed gyms, unemployed trainers. People remain isolated in their homes, but they are still eager to stay fit, they still want to keep in touch with their gym buddies. Sounds like a challenge?

They say that in many ways we will never go back to the times before the pandemic. At least not in the foreseeable future. Many of us will want to keep avoiding large groups of people and sharing equipment with others.

The fitness industry has to respond to this anxiety and find a new place in this new reality. At Autentika we believe that technology can significantly help bridge the gap between the gym, fitness club, or the coach and their customers. For the former, it may be a sales and service delivery channel, and for the latter, it may become a way to realize their sports-related ambitions and maintain their social relations.

Let’s see how it can be done.

The Only 4 Tools I need as a Product — UX Designer

A guide to softwares and tools that I consider essential for Product or User Experience Designer.

Choose the right softwares

Move beyond just asking: “…Sketch or Figma?”

The purpose of this article

is to helping you in choosing the tools that I consider indispensable for my work as a Designer, and why they are essential for me.

So, I hope you can orient yourself in your work and choose your tools tailored to your needs.

Link to all references and templates at the end of the article

Start from your “Why?”.

When choosing a new software, or considering a new tool instead of another, always make sure you have an adequate answer to this question.

The answers can be multiple

For a creative person, reading long page research articles, journals, and books might be an exhausting and boring task. This article will not teach you how to do one as I am not the right person to teach one. I know UX and doing a Literature Review strengthened the understanding of UX Research from a theoretical perspective. So this article shall state a few benefits you gain by doing a literature review for UX research.

Though my scores were not impressive :) I learned humongous from the assignment and the depth and width of the topic I selected. My tutor was satisfied with my performance but was not too happy about it. I weaved my research with Design Thinking principles and not a traditional approach so there was a gap.

I don’t know about you, but I have heard a lot of people saying what’s stopping them from becoming a product designer is a degree. Well, I have seen product designers without a degree, and they are doing quite great. Nobody will dispute the fact that a degree will make things easier for you, provide you relevant skills and theories, as well as give you a certificate to use in getting yourself a job as a product designer.

An approach on hand-drawn Low Fidelity Wireframes.

There is no substitute for the good old fashioned way of picking up a pen and paper. Ask any Illustrator, Graphic Designer, Animator, or Product Manager they’d tell you the same. This is what Wireframes are, an easy way to transform sketches. Usually incorporated at the start of a sprint in Product Development, they are the stepping stones to a Prototype and Product MVP.

In this article, we look at the step by step approach of how one can create a Chatbot Wireframe and Dos and Don’ts of the same.

The type of wireframe we will work on is a hand-drawn Low Fidelity Wireframe.

Problem statement

Demonstrate the User experience for a chatbot that provides general and disease-specific COVID-19 information. The info is from trusted sources such as World Health Organization (WHO) and The Centers for Disease Control (CDC). The user group is general users and the channel is Mobile Application.

4 Tips to Grow Your Career in Design

As the UX design industry expands, so do opportunities for designers. If you’re looking to step into a leadership role, you’ll need to have the curiosity, willingness, and desire to grow in this industry. Great design leadership means leading by example, working through challenges, and seeing the bigger picture and the role the design/product plays in the world. But how do you balance these roles and keep creatively inspired? Follow these four tips to stay connected and build your career in design.

In this case study, You’ll find out how we can solve problems related to digital distractions for working professionals.

So Sabeel why did you choose such a topic to bang your head on?

This was probably my 3rd personal project related to UX design and I wanted to tap into topics like human psychology and how habits were formed in humans. I had worked enough on habit-forming products, however, I wanted to do something different this time, that’s how I decided to work on something that would help to break habits instead. Apparently this case study also bagged me a job offer at the top UX UI Design Studio in India. Check out this badass place I work at Lollypop Design Studio. 🍭