My recent talk at STC UX conference aimed to throw light on why everyone is a designer and is contributing to the co-creation of UX.
We user experience designers, live in exciting yet challenging times. From the rise of social networks, to the evolution of different devices and platforms, to our design decisions being governed by someone else, the excitement for the field is unbounded. However the excitement also comes with its set of challenges. Design being discussed in the board rooms, poses a lot more challenges. While its an indicator that it is being given its long due value, it also leads to a lot of expectations.
This also allows that a lot of people start pitching into the design process. The rise of the adoption of Agile framework at work places, the decision making in design is starting to get faster and often without much thought about ideas.
Another phenomenon that is gaining momentum, is that with design gaining more prominence across projects, often we end up having many more people who need not be from a design background, to contribute to the designs. These come mainly from the Business teams, the technology teams or even the marketing teams. This is also corroborated by the fact that there is a rise of a lot of crowd sourcing platforms. Design faces a lot of challenges when going via a crowd sourcing platform. As a result of all the above, the UX field is undergoing a paradigm shift.
In a follow-up to my earlier article on Co-creating the User experience, I recently gave a talk on the same topic at the STC UX conference, held on 27th August at Bangalore. Here is the presentation that I used in the talk:
Co-creating the User Experience View more presentations from Kshitiz Anand . . . → Read More: The rise of SoLoMoN
A lot has been going on in the corporates, with many tie-ups and mergers. These activities are resulting in a lot of identity being changed and new ones being formed. Change is required for a company to grow. And identities are often a key part of the entire makeover process.
Recently Hero Honda went through one such change, and has now re-branded itself at the Hero Moto Corp. It also introduced its new logo.
Here’s the design brief for the logo design :
“The new logo stands for the new face of India – that youthful energy and ‘can do’ spirit. It is in true sense the “Indian Catapult” which signals that while it is deeply rooted in Indian values, it is also poised to go for global expansion – a Leap of Faith.”
The new Hero logo
My initial thoughts on this was definitely not positive, as the logo as such was a bit difficult to comprehend. The logo is definitely contemporary, especially with the font it has used. But then that was the case with another recent logo fiasco, the Airtel one.
This new Hero Moto corp logo has two components to it. One is the graphic part and the other is the text / typographic part. The graphic part in this case is a 3D one.
The beauty of this logo is that it is simple. It’s easy to reproduce. But thats about it. I have more things to say that are not in its favour.
The problem with 3D logos that play with the concept of positive and negative space is that often it is un-noticed. And even to experts, it becomes obvious only after spending some time staring at it. So it is not surprising that many failed to notice the H that . . . → Read More: The new Hero Moto Cop (Hero Honda) logo
Came across this really nice video that talks about the value of Design, and what people perceive of Design. While the term Desin Thinking is nebulous, there are a lot of attempts to answer it in the correct words. But the fact is that there is no correct answer to that. Design thinking according to me is a way of life, a thought process that is focused on problem solving, but with a strong focus on the Human and their life world.
Some scholars fear the misuse of the term and feel that when Design thinking takes over, the working takes a back seat. It could be true only in the case that Design thinking is a thing to do. In my opinion its not. You do not put it in as an activity, like I did Design thinking for X number of hours on this particular problem. Its something that you adopt in your working culture. It is something that is there at all times, as an underlying theme towards your problem solving approach.
There have been many who have also spoken and written about the death of Design thinking too. Bruce Nussbaum, one of Design Thinking’s biggest advocates, is moving on to something new. Here, he begins defining “Creative Quotient.” While I do not agree to most of what the post says, and neither to the call for a new framework, I do agree to this point: Design Thinking has given the design profession and society at large all the benefits it has to offer and is beginning to ossify and actually do harm. This above statement aligns itself with the fear that many Design thinking proponents talk about, that is that design thinking is all just thinking and no action.
And then there is . . . → Read More: Design and Thinking
With the launch of Google+ , Google did what’s it best at doing. Creating a buzz and hype around a service. It has since long tried to make its presence felt in the Social space, and earlier disasters have been in the form of Buzz and Wave. While the feedback and the discussions around Google+ have been largely positive, I was surprised to see that the invites were being auctioned on eBay!
Social Media Madness
Do we really need another Social Network?
Has Facebook not screwed up our lives enough?
Now that’s what I call Social Media Madness!
I had earlier written about the use of QR codes to make Print ads more interactive. The possibilities of seamlessly being able to transfer information through the use of this is endless.
Here is a nice example, of how QR codes are helping people in their grocery shopping. Home plus is using these to reduce the stress of the hardworking working class Koreans.
Less stress. More smiles. Simple idea. Well executed.
As mentioned in one of my earlier posts, I am looking for posts that summarize the discussions and the hot trends and topics at the CHI conference this year.
I came across two posts that summarize what was being discussed at CHI 2011, in Vancouver this year.
One is by my professor at Indiana; Erik Stolterman. CHI 2011, the field, development, grand challenge, and the need for more books
Excerpts from this post: CHI is changing. It is not easy to really understand what the changes are when you are at the conference, but compared with just a few years ago it is easier to see that there is a difference. The conference is broader, more diverse. I had the chance to go to several sessions and it is exciting to see that not only is the diversity growing but I also found the quality in general to be better than usual. One clear change to me is a new interest in theory. I was very pleased to see a design theory session filling two large rooms, and so did the more theoretical design methods session. I hope that this is a sign that the field is getting more eager to find ways to synthesize findings and results from all the studies, experiments, and designs projects.
The second is from a friend at college, Diya.
CHI 2011, the Social Media and musings
Excerpts from her post: Not surprisingly, social media and the underlying theme of interconnectedness formed the crux of CHI this year. Mining social data and trying to get an insight into user behavioral patterns marked the core of several sessions, presenting some very interesting insights on user behavior on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, Location Sharing applications and Social Question Answering sites. One of the questions that . . . → Read More: Summary posts from CHI 2011
The premier conference on Human Computer Interaction, Interaction Design, User Experience Design, Usability is here again and this time it is being organized in Vancouver Canada. More on the conference can be read on the conference’s site : http://www.chi2011.org/
I am sure the whole world,just like me is looking forward to the conference. We are all eager to hear what’s the things defining the conferences.
From the #chi2011 tag that I have been following on Twitter, I feel that there is going to be an overdose of touch screen interactions, papers on the portable web an cross platform User Experience Design.
My flat-mate at Indiana, Gopinath who is now a doctoral student at Indiana presented his research on Feminist HCI. I look forward to reading his papers too, apart from the Bardzells and Buxtons.
Too bad that I cannot attend the conference since I am here in India. It’s a dream that one day we have this premier conference in India and I be a part of the team that organizes it here! That would be awesome.
As a user experience designer, one is always looking at things from a user point of view. That is well accepted in the industry and elsewhere now. Of late there has been a plethora of devices coming into the scene and majority of them have being driven by touch capabilities. This has resulted in a lot of designers starting to design for the device than design for the user. A few market leaders have also gone to the extent of saying (or atleast have been made to believe) that they do not rely on User Research anymore and just do things with conviction.
With the mobile phone becoming what the PC was a few years ago, the possibilities have increased n fold. There are applications being built everyday. The ease of putting things out there in the market place, open for a wide customer base to use it, has resulted in millions of stuff being built and often for users on whom the designers have not done any primary research. Moreover, the question arises that there are all of these being designed by designers or by anyone who has an access to the SDKs.
With User experience being adopted by many companies in early stages of their product development, I reckon that there are a lot of people doing a bunch of stuff in the name of Design and User Experience Design in particular.
The only question I have is whether we are dying up on the user and relying more on the device. I hope not.
Today Came across a really interesting slide-share presentation today that was a part of a workshop on mobiles. They discuss about the spread of mobiles and how we are becoming more device dependent, in both our actions and the things we create. I . . . → Read More: Design for Device or Design for User
We live in exciting times. There is Information all around us. So much so that we often feel overwhelmed by it and would drown in it. There’s Information that is presented upfront to us. Information that is waiting to be tapped into and hidden beneath a layer of uncertainty waiting to be uncovered. Information that is meant to be circulated and shared. Information that is useful, and Information that is futile.
The medium of information gathering and sharing has change drastically over the past few years. With the introduction of newer devices to consume information, the spectrum gets wider day by day.
Information sharing is happening at a pace that is unprecedented. Before you know it, the information is reached to a an audience that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. With a lot more people consuming information on their personal devices like the cell phones and the other personal gadgets, information is ready to go at all times. Just to give an insight, when the
The seamless blend between the network and the product in hand and the ease of reaching to the social network adds an extra dimension to the whole information dissemination and information consumption life-cycle. Information is also not only being sent out, but also being re-worked upon and shared across networks again and again.
One of the most interesting videos that we came across was this Ignite Talk Flash Mob Gone Wrong by Tom Scott. The event in the video did not happen all in the same sequence, but it give a great illustration of whats possible in the times that we are living it. Go watch it Now!
One of the interesting discussions I remember we had was in Erik Stolterman’s class on the word ‘design’. Basically, Design can be a noun (when used to define a quality of a product). Design can be a activity (I design things.) Design is a profession. Come to think of it, Design also happens to be perhaps the oldest living profession, when you think that every must have been designed in a particular manner before it was invented.
When a designer opens a Design firm, it is a highly challenging situation. And in my opinion, I think it’s more challenging than any other tech startup. Well you may ask why?
To start of with, as an entrepreneur you are constantly doing everything else but Design! Yes, sad but true. So one day you are doing Marketing and Sales and the other day you are writing up proposals. Things you had thought was the job of Managers only. And not to forget what technical writers are meant for, you end up doing that as well. You grow your networking and improve your networking and people skills. You attend gatherings of other entrepreneurs, inspire each other and then find the next gathering and its location.
In the hustle- bustle of all this, Design as an Activity takes back stage. You tend to think that since you are in the Design Profession, you will end up doing good Design (a noun here) any day, no matter how long you do not do it. However, i think that is not true. Design is a process that has to be practiced. One needs to keep doing it from time to time. This can be in the form of simple doodles, sketches, diagrams etc to full fledged design solutions.
Therefore any Designer in . . . → Read More: I am a Designer. I DESIGN.
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