Designers🎤alk #37 with Saumya Agarwal ( HFI CUA™ || UX Designer at Oracle)| PHASE 3 [IND Edition]

Date: 17h April 2021

Saumya is an engineer turned UX designer. She’s working at Oracle and previously worked for companies like Cognizant and etc.⁣ In this talk, she has shared her opinions regarding:

1️⃣Proactive and Reactive design;

2️⃣Human-Centered and User-Centered design;

3️⃣empathetic design & etc;

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

My design journey started in 2016 when I was too sad to see “ ;( “at the end of every line of code, I wanted to do something for myself.

I kept asking myself what are my strengths to which my heart replied that I love to help people, I can empathize with people and abstract paintings have always been a way to express myself in my free time.

One of my mentors told me about UX and within a few hours, I was able to resonate with the essence of being a good UX designer as empathy is one of the most important aspects of a good UX Designer.

That day I decided and here I am, a Certified Usability Analyst contributing my bit to the world of Design :)

Q2: What exactly is Human-Centered Design and How it’s different from User-Centered design?

Though the terms “user” and “human” are often used separately when referring to design strategies, they are closely related and not mutually exclusive.

In some scenarios, the user-centric and human-centric design could be the same thing: Both are focused on providing the end-user (or human) with a design that’s beneficial to people’s life.

In other circumstances, it appears that user-centric and human-centric design could differ slightly. For example, the user-centric design could be taken as a less emotionally empathetic approach, focused primarily on the tangible, physiological ways users interact with a platform, whereas human-centric design incorporates their emotional or psychological preferences as well.

Human-centered design is not exclusive to any design discipline. In addition to UX designers, industrial designers, furniture designers, and even architects can take a human-centered approach to their work if they wish.

Those using human-centered design in their work are often trying to make an impact in the lives of others through design. They make and stay in contact with users and customers and get feedback along the way.

User experience design is the design of multisensory experiences, typically at the interface between humans and technology. It is one of many design disciplines that takes a human-centred approach.

Q3: What’re the essential steps to become a good UX designer?

Understand what is UX?

Where do you belong in the entire process that a UX Designer follows? Like for me, it was empathy, communication, and being true.

Choose the right way to learn, internet has a lot of knowledge which could be overwhelming. If you can afford to go for a degree, go for it. Else there are certifications that can help you learn the process and take your first step to be a UX Designer. BUT do all the risk analysis and then choose.

Do proper research before choosing the right platform to learn. Till the time you finalize the above, start learning from reliable sources like

• YouTube — Adobe creative cloud (a great place to learn the tools)
• Medium has great articles to start with.

Once you decide which college or a certification, put your heart and soul into that learning.

Never forget why you chose it! Keep learning and sharing what you learn.: Be true to this journey, you’ll be the UX Designer this world needs :)

Q4: Would you want to share something about proactive & reactive design in simple terms? Which approach is better in designing?

Well, they both work well in different situations.

• It’s always good to be proactive, having more than one solution for a problem whereas when a problem comes up suddenly, it’s good to have a reactive approach and give a solution.
• Proactive help better as you have more time to spend on the problem statement but the reactive approach works really well when we need instant ideas to solve a problem.
• A proactive approach focuses on eliminating problems before they have a chance to appear and a reactive approach is based on responding to events after they have happened.

The difference between these two approaches is the perspective each one provides in assessing actions and events.

Q5: What do you think is a key for writing a successful UX design case study?

Deep understanding of the case (problem statement) and taking up the most probable possibilities than all the possibilities to solve.

Support the case study with the process you followed and pictures of any activity that you performed.

Q6: What do we mean by empathetic design and why is it needed?

Empathetic design means that we as designers are able to keep ourselves in the shoes of the users and empathize with them to give a solution to their problems.

As human beings the most beautiful thing is to be able to understand another human being, the products are designed for humans to use, if their emotions, needs, and goals are well thought of with a human centred design approach then there is no way the product won’t be successful.

EQ is also important, more than IQ I believe.

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 Oracle?

Make sure your process to solve the problem as a UX Designer is clear because we at Oracle focus on how you define the process and follow it.

We clearly focus on UX if it’s UX and UI if it’s UI. There’s a difference between the two. UI is a part of UX.

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

1. Design in one word: World
2. A product that inspires you: Canvas
3. Favorite design blog/publication: “Art Matters” by Neil Gaiman
4. Favorite gadget: Camera
5. Dribbble or Behance: Behance
6. Linkedin/Twitter/Instagram: Instagram
7. DesignersTalk in one word: Thoughtful
8. Favorite Design Series/Video/Movie: All Disney Movies
9. First Choice(Website/App): Video Maker
10. Favorite Design System: iOS
11. Android or iOS: iOS
12. XD/Figma/Sketch/Invision Studio: XD
13. Go-To Tool for you as a designer: XD
14. Taking Design Inspiration from: Nature
15. Design Hero: My Mother

Thank you 🙏 Saumya💚⁣⁣⁣ 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”.

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