Designers🎤alk #33 with Shreya Saxena( Product Designer at Urban Company)| PHASE 3 [IND Edition]

Date: 20th March 2021

Shreya is working as a Product Designer for one of India’s largest home services platform i.e Urban Company. In this talk, she has shared her opinions regarding:⁣

1️⃣ looking for new projects in your portfolio;

2️⃣ difference between bad andconstructive feedback;

3️⃣ how to understand human perception as a designer & etc;

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

My story is all about experimenting with what works for me and following my gut. While studying computer science in college, I found it easier to get design internships and gigs online.

As I started coming across clients with a lot of opinions on colours, themes, and copy, I wondered how ‘actual’ designers go about the process, what is the science behind this craft of riveting up usability through pixels on the screen. Still, I was undecided whether to be a dev or take up UX full-time.

Luckily during placements, the one last company was looking for a UX Engineer; they have seen my Behance portfolio already, liked my projects et al. I have been selected in all 5 companies that I interviewed for that day but this one role felt right.

The rest is a history of more such experiments and zeroing in on product design after dabbling with illustration, UI, and copywriting.

Q2: For someone looking for new projects in their portfolio, how do you find or define interesting concepts to design around?

It will depend on what kind of medium you use to solve a problem. For product designers, good design comes from being sensitive to the problems around us. And it need not only be confined to pixels & beautiful graphics.

The process of finding the problem, prioritising which ones to solve, and surveying users who face that problem is crucial. Then only you switch on that laptop and give shape to your ideas.

I feel that instead of redesigning Netflix, we can take up personal challenges. I chose to design around how to manage a large wardrobe 👗 and that really me through some interesting interviews and conversations.

When someone chooses to redesign Netflix, it lacks a lot of realistic contexts as we do not know what constraints the actual team is operating in.

Q3: What’s the importance of feedback in your design career? How do you differentiate between bad or constructive feedback?

Feedback is really important to grow as a designer.

It taught me to view my designs through a critical lens and not consider them as my babies!

Good feedback is the responsibility of the designer who is looking for feedback in the first place. We have to be sharp in setting the context and defining what exactly we want to critique. And it matters who we are asking it from.

When I want an opinion on visuals, I ask graphic designers & illustrators, for UX-copy, I check with legal and copywriting experts.

Q4: How to be a better designer by understanding Human perception?

We have a lot of literature on understanding human behaviours. That we are not rational, is well known.

In my context, I try to understand the audience by observing the data. Many times, there’s a disparity in what we say or perceive is different than what we actually end up doing. Hence, collecting opinions is good but backing that up with past behaviours, patterns are wise.

Q5: Any last advice for aspiring designers breaking into the UI/UX industry especially from an Engineering background like Pros and Cons?

There is no substitute for user accessibility testing, so get comfortable talking to people and getting your designs ripped apart 😛 The sunny side is that everyone intuitively understands good design, but that is the flip side, too; you will have no dearth of opinions and at some stage, you might feel like an impostor.

I managed by having an awesome support system around me by way of mentors, family, investing in courses, and learning from great designers from other parts of the world.

Q6: As you and your team had worked on a “ payment feature that helped the business save more than 20 million INR during the COVID lockdown”. So what do you think about how COVID has impacted the UI/UX design market?

Most companies now are flexible or are completely remote. So there are literally no boundaries to where you can or cannot work. It’s a good time for freelancers as more and more businesses come online. Better grab it while you can!

Q7: Would you want to share a few tips with folks out there who want to join as interns or a UI/UX or product designer at Urban Company?

Urban Company values culture more than hard skills.

So I am sure, there is plenty of advice available on what to put and what not to put in your CV, having the right attitude is super important. Check out https://medium.com/uc-design to know more about us.

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

1. Design in one word: Nature
2. A product that inspires you: A straw
3. Favorite design blog/publication: Urban Company’s Design blog
4. Favorite gadget: Fineliner pens
5. Dribbble or Behance: Medium
6. Linkedin/Twitter/Instagram: Twitter
7. DesignersTalk in one word: Community
8. Favorite Design Series/Video/Movie: New Layer by Tanner Christensen
9. First Choice(Website/App): app
10. Favorite Design System: Loki (It’s the one we use at UC)
11. Android or iOS: Android
12. XD/Figma/Sketch/Invision Studio: Anything that works 🙏
13. Go-To Tool for you as a designer: Whiteboard
14. Taking Design Inspiration from: Architecture
15. Design Hero: My father. He’s an engineer, an architect & a businessman.

Thank you 🙏 Shreya💚⁣⁣⁣ 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.

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