Designers🎤alk #23 with Nishant Bali ( UX Design Specialist at SAP Labs | Mentor at Springboard)| PHASE 3 [IND Edition]

Date: 10th January 2021

Nishant is currently working for SAP Labs and he previously worked for Oracle and many other good companies. Also, he’s mentoring young designers at Springboard. In this talk, he has shared his opinions regarding how UX different from UI, UX Metrics, design feedback, and etc.

Q1. Hi Nishant, nice to meet you. Let’s start with a short background story. How did you get started in design?

I come from a Computer Science Engineering Background. During my graduation as well as internship, I had hands-on experience in programming languages.

During my first job with TCS, fortunately, I got an opportunity to work with a major blue-chip client where the requirement was to design a web portal right from the scratch.

Being unaware of what ‘design’ actually meant, I took a leap of faith and jumped right in. Obviously, the initial journey was quite challenging as I didn’t have a formal education in design but my peers and mentors helped a lot. So, my learning on design has been on the job

Q2: Why UX is different from other design disciplines like UI? How do they relate?

There’s this huge misconception when it comes to UI & UX.

Remember when we were in school and we used to draw Venn Diagrams? Think of UX as this huge circle and UI is a small circle inside it. Or simply, you can say: UI is a subset of UX.

I also read a quote somewhere which I really liked a lot. It says: UX is a journey and UI is the destination.

Q3: What UX metrics have you used to evaluate your designs?

First of all, you need to understand that UX metrics differ from project to project, but they are really important to quantify the value of your design and to measure success.

There are multiple metrics you can use but before you define them, you need to understand the business goals. But why business goals? See, for best results, there should be a balance between user needs and business goals.

In my previous projects, some of the UX metrics I have used to evaluate the designs:

1. User Satisfaction Index
2. User Engagement Metrics (Unique Visitors, New/Returning Visitors, Page Views, etc.)
3. Usability Metrics (TAT, Task Success Rate, Error Rate, etc.)

Q4: Tell me something about “Designers Life At Oracle”. What qualities Oracle’s looking for when hiring a UI/UX designer?

Oracle is one of the best companies to work for. One of the key things that I liked working at Oracle is that they help you maintain your work-life balance.

Now talking about the designer’s life, it’s really amazing to be a member of the design team at Oracle. They have one of the best design systems in place. And you get all kinds of opportunities to grow professionally.

When hiring a UI/UX Designer, one of the key skills Oracle looks for in a candidate is their attitude. By attitude, I mean the willingness to learn and pro-activeness to come up with new ideas & solutions.

Q5: Did you make any strategic changes to your portfolio once you decided to make a career change from a computer science engineering student to a UX designer?

Well Of course! As I mentioned, Initially I had a background in coding but once I got exposure to the design field, I was sure that I want to build my career in design.

So, apart from on-the-job learning, I also completed some unsolicited UX case studies so that I can showcase them in my portfolio.

Q6:What do you think about the future of design in India?

Let’s just not talk about India, take the whole design industry. I do believe the demand for UX Designers will keep growing not only in the tech space but in other industries as well.

But there’s a catch. Designers need to stay adaptable and willing to upskill because the future of design is beyond screens.

Alexa & Siri have already become a part of our lives. Everybody is aware that Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, AI, and Voice Command Industries are booming nowadays. There is going to be a huge demand for designers in that space in the near future.

My advice: Be Adaptable.

Q7: When the client says, “ I don’t like this design”. What do you do?

I know this is a very uncomfortable scenario but here are a few tips that I use in such cases:

1. Listen thoroughly and understand where your client is coming from.
2. Then take a step back and think as a neutral party whether the client is right. I used the word ‘neutral’ here because sometimes, after investing so much time in designing a product, we tend to have a personal bias with our designs which ideally we shouldn’t have.
3. Assuming your design is according to the client’s requirement, you don’t need to cave to the clients at the slightest disagreement.
4. You should remember that the client may not have expertise in the design field.
5. As a designer, it is our responsibility to convince the client and articulate our design decisions efficiently.
6. Take them back to the requirements and tell them how your designs perfectly satisfy all their needs.

But Remember! do not get defensive and never take a disagreement personally.

Q8: Designers Talk: Wrap Up round(One word or Choice-based)

1. Design in one word: Improvement
2. A product that inspires you: Lego
3. Favorite design blog/publication: Muzli
4. Favorite gadget: Beard-Trimmer
5. Dribbble or Behance: None
6. Linkedin/Twitter/Instagram:LinkedIn
7. DesignersTalk in one word: Refreshing
8. Favorite Design Series/Video/Movie: Minimalism
9. First Choice(Website/App): Website
10. Favorite Design System: Material Design System
11. Android or iOS: Android
12. XD/Figma/Sketch/Invision Studio: Figma
13. Go-To Tool for you as a designer: Pen/Paper
14. Taking Design Inspiration from: Mobbin
15. Design Hero: Everchanging

Thank you 🙏 Nishant💚⁣⁣⁣ for giving your precious time
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The motto for this DesignersTalk is to “Bridge the gap between Industry Standard Designers and New Designers”.

Why text-based? Because it’s precise, to-the-point opinions and it also gives freedom to those designers who want to share but not comfortable in front of the camera and who don’t want to give their too much time but still wanted to contribute.

If you like it, please follow this publication and share it with the design community and help them to learn from the experience of the great designers without investing your and their tooooo much time…

Akash ✍️💚