Musings on my design journey

I’ve always wondered why products are so arbitrarily complex and confusing. Why do the product creators provide so many features and options? Why should the common man get perplexed with the multitude of choices? But every time I saw an easy-to-use product like the humble computer mouse or more recently, the unassuming Google Chromecast device or the Google search page, I felt immensely satisfied with the simplicity on offer.

Back in 2010 when I was leading a team of talented engineers to build a new product at Hewlett Packard, Bangalore, we engaged with a user interface consultant working out of United Kingdom. His approach to making the entire user workflow unsophisticated and intuitive, immediately resonated with my inner passion to “simplify” and enrich the user experience. It is not about what the product or service offers – it is the user journey and experience that counts. Through my career spanning over twenty-five years, this has manifested multiple times and has shaped my thought process to always “become” the user. It is one thing to empathize with the user but a completely different thing to “become” the user.

Since 2008, I have “become” the user of two apps that are now on Google Play Store. Being passionate about Android development and personal finance, I started building a spreadsheet to track my finances and through my personal experiences and pains, this transformed into a full-fledged Android app called FinanceGuru. By becoming the user, I have done a lot of informal user research and usability testing to continually improve this app. Another instance of “becoming” the user was more recent in late 2018 when I played a word game with my daughters on a piece of paper. Realizing the benefits of making this into a mobile game, my family became the users and helped shape the game called Camouflage.

By 2016, my elder daughter had nurtured ambitions of becoming an animation designer with a dream of working at Disney or Pixar, who churn out one creative movie after another like an assembly line in a factory. As I helped her in making this decision, it rekindled my passion for design. I explored various options to switch my career to user experience (UX) after a rewarding career in software engineering and leadership. It was through my daughter’s design coaching center that I came to know of Designerrs. And in July 2019, I decided to enroll for the Full Stack UX course, to educate myself in the formal design process. With this option now available, I no longer needed to change my career but instead weave design thinking into everything I do at work.

The last three months of training by Sidhant Goyal has been enriching. His industry insights were very helpful in understanding the behind-the-scenes design process of hugely successful companies like Samsung. Various books I read along the way were thought-provoking too. I would strongly recommend reading “Hooked” by Nir Eyal, “Creative Confidence” by Tom Kelly and of course the famous “Design of everyday things” by Don Norman.

As the UX course concluded, it dawned on me that I had developed my apps, using some of the design process stages such as user interviews, user personas, task flow, wireframes, visual design, and usability testing…albeit using these informally and unknowingly! Now that I am aware of the design process – thanks to Sidhant and Designerrs, I am sure to put my tenets of Delivering simple, creative solutions to users through the lens of a formally structured thought every time.

I have never been so excited to apply design thinking to all facets of my career and life!!! My daughter is proud of me and so am I. 😊