Designers🎤alk #40 with Anju Banthia ( User Experience Manager at Capgemini)| PHASE 4]

Date: 18h April 2021

Anju is working as a User Experience Manager at Capgemini. She’s having more than 10 yrs of experience in the UX domain. In this talk, she has shared her opinions regarding:

1️⃣ sustainable product design;

2️⃣ design thinking work in an agile environment;

3️⃣ service design & etc;

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

Frankly, I come from a business family background where commerce
comes by default, and I was never fascinated with numbers. So I took up
arts.

Plus, certain things have always motivated me since childhood:

• Loaded with sparking ideas
• Enthusiast about solving the problem
• Asking questions until I was clear
• Empathising

I always had a deep interest in creative endeavours, from there on my
interest started to blossom in UX and there is no looking back now.

Q2: How to combine insight and evidence to make your research findings credible?

This is more like imagination vs Reality.

The experience will bring in more insights on the subject/domain where facts would showcase reality.

Envisioning the product/solution should be the first step and the reality
check comes through research as the second step. Combining this would
bring the following:

• Viable product/solution
• Address both the business and user goals/requirements
• Faster user adaptability

When you do research, your goal is to uncover insights you can use to
inform your product decisions. Gather evidence to support your insights.

Q3: How can designers ensure their products are sustainable?

Climate change is on everyone’s minds and it should be, after all, this is
the only planet we have.

Making a positive change and be a part of the transition to a circular and sustainable economy by design.

Making negative impacts on people and planets by following simple, sustainable, design strategies, the practice of enabling this is called circular system design.

Some of the points to consider are:

• Repair, any product which gets damaged or breaks should be easy to
  repair/upgrade/fix.
• Disassembly, a product to be designed so that it can be very easily
  taken apart for recycling at the end of its life.
• Longevity, products that are aesthetically timeless, highly durable and
  will retain their value over time so people can resell them or pass them
  on.
• Recyclability, You have to consider the recyclability of all the materials,
  the way they are put together and the use case, along with the ease of
  recycling at end of life.
• Modularity, products can be moved and configured in different spaces
  and uses have an increased ability to function well.
• Reusability, a product can be reused differently from its intended
  the original purpose, without much extra material or energy inputs.
• Re-manufacture, from strategy point a product is a design in such a way,
  that it parts or entire product can be re-manufactured into new usable
  goods in a closed-loop system.
• Equity, a product for all, like blue toys for boys, chunky glasses for men, etc. Accidentally or intentionally, many goods are designed to
  reinforce stereotypes.

Q4: How to come with sample projects for a UX portfolio?

A considerable amount of time and effort goes into building a stellar UX
designer portfolio and it will be a worthy investment.

Problem: “I need more projects for my portfolio”
Goal: “Find more problems to solve so I can get more experience”

Try these 3 Mantras:

1. Be open to experiment, learn and explore more freelance work
2. Become a prolific problem spotter, document problem statement
   that you encounter in everyday life. This helps you train your problem
   spotter muscle and generate a ton of problems for projects.
3. Participate in competitions, on all platforms.

Few projects, that will enhance your portfolio to prove you’re the best
the person for the job:

1. Lead Generation Landing Page
2. Blog or Digital Publication
3. Ecommerce Website
4. Mobile App Design
5. Marketing Website
6. Web App Design

Q5: How does design thinking work in an agile environment?

According to me,

agile and design thinking are made for each other, they
complement each other.

Design thinking takes an empathetic approach. It looks at the “why” of a
the problem, with a focus on generating fresh ideas that teams test with a
series of user-focused exercises.

With design thinking, the goal is to define a solution that satisfies users’ real needs, while Agile methods focus on the “how” of project delivery, breaking up the planning and scope of work into smaller units. Agile has an incremental and iterative approach.

To harmonise design thinking and agile, each team member’s focus must be on delivering great outcomes for users instead of on output-centric goals.

Q6: What’s the service design? How one can make service design more tangible?

Service Design is about Designing for the Biggest Picture.

Investigating all of the elements that make up a service and visualize what consists of a user perspective and a business perspective.

I believe we can make service design more tangible by bringing like-minded people together, who care about this way of thinking and want to talk about it.

We need more dedicated teams that sit outside of product teams, looking holistically at experiences outside of our typical product structure.

Q7: How long a UX case study or portfolio should be?

Every project or case study is different. Subjective? Yes. But design is
subjective.

This is why you must stop focusing on length. Ensure that hiring managers and recruiters aren’t overwhelmed and instead, are engaged with your case study and want to learn more about you as a candidate.

Remember! Stop focusing on the literal word count of your UX case studies. Instead, start focusing on how long the case study feels.

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

1. Design in one word: Simple
2. A product that inspires you: Google Search
3. Favorite design blog/publication: Nielsen Norman Group
4. Favorite gadget: Camera
5. Dribbble or Behance or Medium: Medium
6. Linkedin/Twitter/Instagram: LinkedIn
7. DesignersTalk in one word: Diverse
8. Favorite Design Series/Video/Movie: Social Dilemma
9. Love to design(Website or App): App
10. Favorite Design System: Google Material Design
11. Android or iOS: iOS
12. XD/Figma/Sketch/Invision Studio: Figma
13. Go-To Tool for you as a designer: Adobe XD
14. Taking Design Inspiration from: Everywhere
15. Design Hero: Mr. Don Norman

Thank you 🙏 Anju💚⁣⁣⁣ for giving your precious time
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