Designersđ¤alk #25 with Rahul Chakraborty( Senior Product Designer at Swiggy)| PHASE 3 [IND Edition]
Date: 24th January 2021
Rahul is working as a Sr. Product Designer for one of Indiaâs best FoodTech company i.e âSwiggyâ. Also, he worked for Flipkart and Headout. In this talk, he has shared his opinions regarding dribbble shots, case studies, voice user interface(VOI) and etc.
Q1. Hi Rahul, nice to meet you. Letâs start with a short background story. How did you get started in design as you had a physics background?
Hi Akash, Nice to meet you too. Thanks for doing this interview series. I was doing my major in Physics when I stumbled upon Graphic Design in my second year.
I worked on quite a few freelance projects to build a basic portfolio. By the end of my third year in 2015, I moved into Product/UX, and have never looked back since then. I dropped out of college and dedicated my time and effort to deep dive into this field.
Luckily, my portfolio was decent enough to bring some good freelance clients looking for UI/UX project collabs. This continued for few months, until I joined Headout, as their first in-house Product Designer in 2016.
Q2: Should designers do Fake conceptual/side projects for their portfolio? Is it worth it? If no, then what else they can do?
Conceptual/Side projects are one of the best way to build a solid beginner portfolio. I worked on a lot of such projects alongside my freelance projects during my early days.
The best part of a side project is that you are free to explore your own domain and depth.
I would recommend Artiom Dashinskyâs Solving Product Design Exercices to every designer starting out there. The book has a detailed explanation on how to approach and solve any problem. There are some great sample exercises in the book which would make great concept projects for a beginner portfolio.
Q3: How much time youâll take to write a perfect case study? Whatâre the things(like structure) that you want to put in that case study?
I donât believe there is any perfect design (or case study to be specific). The depth and purpose of a case study always depends on the problem you solved and the audience you are writing it for.
If I am writing a case study for a portfolio, I would spend more time on the details of my work process. If the case study is meant to be a public resource for other designers, a detailed case study works; but I would rather trim it for quick consumption.
https://essays.uxdesign.cc/case-study-factory/ is a great site on how to write great case studies (with lots of examples in it).
Q4: Is it worth building a portfolio on Dribbble?
Dribbble is a great place to show off your visual skills. It can work as a portfolio for some beginners if they can manage to post all details of each project neatly.
But I would recommend keeping Dribbble as a secondary portfolio (sort of) and build a dedicated primary portfolio on:
- Notion
- Medium or
- Personal website (if feasible).
Q5: Whatâre the attributes of a good UI/UX designer?
A great attribute any designer should definitely have is empathy.
Empathy towards users, towards fellow designers, towards other team members in your company.
I say this so because empathy provides a certain level of context, and a good context on anything/person makes subsequent actions easier.
Q6: How do you handle ânegative feedbackâ or ârejections of designâ as a designer?
Rejections and Feedbacks are a crucial part of the Design Process.
Over the years, I have noticed a pattern in this process: Some of the best projects I worked on were a result of a very strict feedback and rejection process. It sets a high bar of excellence.
Having said that, one should be always mindful of vague feedback such as ânot looking goodâ or âit needs to pop moreâ. One should always provide a reason behind any input.
Sometimes subjective inputs are fine, but make sure to deep dive into the feedback and break it down into objective pieces.
Q7: âAs you were part of building Indiaâs first multimodal e-commerce experience at Flipkart.â How to Design Voice User Interfaces that enhance the user experience?
In todayâs world, Voice user interfaces (VUI) havenât reached their full potential yet. I believe it will be a couple of years before VUI becomes mainstream.
All the primary use cases of a VUI are mostly command-based (user gives input, VUI gives the output). A great VUI is where people can converse with the interface seamlessly and naturally.
We studied a lot of core conversational principles during the VUI project at Flipkart. We had numerous in-person usability tests to validate our designs. We wanted to understand why and when people give commands compared to conversing with the interface.
The findings (still going on) helped improve the overall experience of the product
Q8: Designers Talk: Wrap Up round(One word or Choice-based)
- Design in one word: Bridge (Design acts as a bridge between the situation we have and the one we desire)
- A product that inspires you: Notion
- Favorite design blog/publication: Articles by www.nngroup.com
- Favorite gadget: Macbook
- Dribbble or Behance: Dribbble
- Linkedin/Twitter/Instagram: Twitter
- DesignersTalk in one word: Endeavouring
- Favorite Design Series/Video/Movie: Abstract (Netflix)
- Favorite Design System: Polaris by Shopify
- Android or iOS: iOS
- XD/Figma/Sketch/Invision Studio: Figma
- Go-To Tool for you as a designer: Figma
- Taking Design Inspiration from: Mobbin
The motto for this DesignersTalk is to âBridge the gap between Industry Standard Designers and New Designersâ.
Why text-based? Because itâs 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 donât 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 timeâŚ
Akash âď¸đ
