The aha moment at WiT2019!
Apart from meeting people and learning from one’s personal stories the most amazing part of attending conferences is participating in workshops. These interactive sessions help me learn and strengthen the practical edge on the vast variety of tech-related topics. I had a few aha moments during these workshops at the Women in Tech Forum 2019 conference and I have jotted down some of them here.
Responsibility Process
In the event schedule, I was very much interested in a workshop organized by Reaktor. They shared their thoughts and principles to better understand complex and big issues like climate change, education for development, and sadly the list goes on. Surprisingly, these principles are also applicable in the current situation which is caused due to the global catastrophe, COVID-19.
We discussed the Responsibility process constructed by Christopher Avery. Basically, as humans, we first deny the issue then start blaming others. These two can be considered as the current phase in the climate change context. Later on, we might continue justifying and feeling ashamed of haven’t done anything about the issue. But, we can jump right to the top by taking individual responsibilities. And, if we also choose to fix the issues then we can start with at least three things, it could be small/big actions. Now this was the aha moment! I realised that I did not have to feel overwhelmed or helpless of the situation but instead I could take practical steps towards the situation and fulfill my responsibility.
According to the host, “Responsible Growth Thinking” is the way to go compared to just “Growth Mindset”. So, what’s the difference between both? Growth Mindset is the ability to question the current situation and to have alternative ideas. It also enables fast learning and idea validation through experimentation. On the contrary, Responsible Growth Mindset encourages companies to think “can return on investment be something else than money?”. It also helps to understand, tackle the challenge in a more positive and empathetic way. It helps to avoid the feeling of anxiety and overwhelming which we might experience when hearing the word “climate change” or “COVID-19” or even when talking about the same topic with someone near-by.
The discussions in smaller groups were refreshing as we talked about the measures to take in our offices to support environment-friendly. The problems faced currently in the workplace lied under the topics of commuting to work, less awareness, food waste, use of plastic, throwing old furniture in the dustbin, and so on.
For me, it was enlightening to see and listen to some ideas ranging from specific activity to overview strategy. For instance, setting the fundamentals of the company in the right direction and considering eco-friendly strategies while making big decisions in a company was one of them. Turning off the screens when not in use, growing their own food in the office, or rooftop garden were a few as individual actions.
One of the greatest learning from this session was that even if I cannot fix the whole world at one-go, I can at least start with three measures/actions from my side. The host titled it as “the rule of three”.
Given the pandemic situation now, the issue of climate change might feel far away. Regardless of what type of issue comes in front of us by following the rule of three we can be safe and take action points to fight against the challenging situation. Thus, I request everyone reading this article to not allow the anxiety to take over you but to start taking 3 simple actions to deal with the challenges.
Conversational User Interface
Yet another workshop was hosted by @franticcom. This was a fun hands-on workshop with the topic of designing a conversational user interface. The core of a voice UI is articulating the dialogues between people and devices.
The learning part was understanding how to (points/action plan) given by them. And the fun part of listening to all was the dialogues exchanged between a hypothetical service and the customer. Our team was focusing on writing the dialogues to help the end-user book a flight ticket for a given period of time and a type of persona. Although within the time limit our team did come up with a sequential dialogue conversation by the end of the workshop we realized we missed out on a couple of crucial points.
One more thing I learned for designing a voice UI, as a designer we need to consider two persona(s) for a voice UI. The first persona reflects the end-user and the second, is not literally the persona but the company’s brand. The dialogue from the service depends on how formal or friendly the company is known as a brand or would like to be! So, it is important to understand how the company interacts with the customer in the form of their communication channels, delivering services/products, and their relationship with the customer (or) end-user.
As seen in the picture, the voice UI was designed pretty well but it missed a few crucial points. This exercise opened a few questions in my brain like are we supposed to prepare a structure first and then focus on tone of voice, designing the UI, etc or do the other way around or even do it parallel. In the latter cases, if in parallel then how? Also, the most challenging part was how to keep the questions short and clear?
Well, some questions are answered by now but some are still left unanswered and I’m actively looking for projects to collaborate and work with conversational UI. Additionally, if you would like to learn more from the some of the inspiring women in the technology field then please feel free to drop by my other article — Takeaways from Women in Tech Forum 2019.
