My Work
Skills
My Story
A case study to understand what's holding people to become fit.
How a one week design sprint helped in creating a solution for the problem.
Insufficient physical activity is one of the 10 leading risk factors for global mortality- WHO
Took a human-centred design approach i.e. Design Thinking for understanding and attempting to solve the problem.
My role was to drive the case study by recruiting participants, scheduling interviews, defining problem statement, ideating, presenting the prototyped solution to users and evaluating feedback.
UX Projects or Design thinking do not follow a linear methodology, but for the purpose of this case study, I am describing the work done during different phases in a linear structure below.
To gain empathy about users I took the approach of mixing structured and unstructured interview. For gaining deeper understanding I used generative technique i.e. context mapping, it helped me understand the day to day life of users.
To empathise with users developed following Persona:
Analysis and synthesis of information gathered to create a human centred problem definition.
All the data collected during interviews, photographs and probes organized into major themes to create Affinity Diagram.
Created an Empathy Map of whats users said, did, thought and felt.
Using empathy map created user needs.
Users point of view
Making point of view actionable by constructing "How Might We" questions.
How might we help a mother to swap task within there family?
How might we help a busy person outsource there task to create more time for exercise?
How might we help a working mother to find a partner to exercise with?
How might we help people exercise during office hours?
Generating ideas to solve the problem and selecting the best idea to prototype with. Utilized Worst Possible Idea and Challenge your assumption to generate ideas :
A fun filled exercise
Reverse the perspective to create new Ideas.
Create a list of assumptions about the problem
Challenging assumptions by asking "What if" questions.
Finding ways to make challenge a reality
Utilized Six Thinking Hats technique to select potential ideas to prototype with
Share real life stories of how people became fit in difficult circumstances.
Selected this idea for Prototyping
A Virtual Assistant to help them in staying fit.
Selecting and developing one of the ideas as a prototype. Developing a storyboard to flesh our how users are going to experience the product.
Defining major user flows.
Going back to users showing them storyboard and prototype, and capturing results
The challenge of this case study was to understand whats going on
in minds of busy people preventing them to exercise. By carrying
out user research I was able to gain depth of problem statement.
The potential idea which can solve the problem has gained traction
to users because they felt there is someone who can understand them.
One of the challenges in building this kind of app is content creation,
there should exist a sufficient amount of stories which can motivate users.
This will be work in progress as I continue to build a high fidelity prototype
and gain more feedback.
During this case study, I learned how to recruit users, creating problem definition, applying
ideation techniques and doing usability testing.
Why is becoming an entrepreneur so hard? What is the path? Is there a right education for it?
With so much information available on startups and entrepreneurship still this skill is hard to learn.
Followed Google Design Sprint, a five day process for designing the solution for problem, prototyping and testing ideas.
This was my first design thinking exercise. We were able to put up a solution to the problem in a week time. The response to prototype was mixed. Some entrepreneurs liked it and some were not in favor of it. The content we prepared in design sprint was narrow. More design sprints will be conducted to further evolve the idea and prototype.
As a self-taught designer, I trained myself on Design thinking prescribed by Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford. The process of Design thinking is non-linear and iterative which means it can be applied to products which are already in production or completely a new idea.
Design thinking helps in tackling Wicked Problems and it helps in finding the most obvious solution which can be difficult due to self-imposed constraint.
Setting aside assumptions and seeing the world through the eyes of your Users and understanding there feeling and emotions
Define the problem by synthesising information
Generating and Selecting Ideas to solve a problem
Creating a prototype which can be evaluated and tested by users.
I am a self-taught User Experience Designer. I have a background in software development and support. My work experience started as a customer service executive (where I learned great things about customer service) followed by working in various software companies as a developer and Software Consultant.
My interest in User Experience design was an accidental discovery. During my last job, I was attempting to build a product. Although I failed in those experiments later I realized that all the activities I did to build the product i.e Customer Development, Conducting Interviews, Prototyping, Collecting feedback opened up a new world for me. I realized how listening to others, empathy can be utilized to build great products.
After dropping out of the full-time job I realized that great design starts with designing things for yourself. I found happiness in solving problems for my self, optimizing daily chores, creating good habits, exercising regularly. All these things made me realize that having a design-based approach to solve problems is the way to unlock productivity and solving problems.
I love learning new things and tinker with technology as well. Occasionally I watch Seinfeld and from there I learned self-deprecating humour too.
Yes, my first software development project didnt turn out to be great. Both personally and as a team, I failed to deliver software on time. It made me realise software development is not easy and why so many projects fail.
I like software development its a part of me, learning new things is something I am always excited about. Creating a a prototype can be a sweet spot for both my design and development skills.
Web, Mobile, Web Api (REST)
My last job gave me an opportunity to contribute a lot to organisation development. I joined as a second employee and I saw the company grow and contribute to it. I took risks by learning new tech and delivering projects on those areas. I was in the interview panel for the beginning and learned a lot on how to hire people. I also ran a community inside my company called CleanCode which was all about getting better in writing code.
Solving complex problem, bringing people together, creating a design, validating it.
I have a deep interest in problem solving. Currently I am investing lot of time in Visual Thinking and have been using it in daily life.
Yes I am freelance designer. Please contact me on Twitter, email or phone.
Here it is: CV in PDF