UX Hack-IDF Bengaluru Meetup
Faircent — Lender onboarding challenge
What is UX hack?
UX Hack is a hackathon platform that helps companies engage product and ux professionals to solve real product problems as well as helps them build a talent pipeline.
Pre-event
Nishith Gupta(Founder) & Akshay Kadani (Co-founder) were live on Facebook and left the audience thinking about the challenge they had unveiled and their hustling spirit to prove UI≠UX.
Fast forward..
Meetup was scheduled in Scripbox office, which is right above the grand and elegant ‘The Leela Palace’. One enters through the Hotel’s entrance, after a bit of airport kinda security check, a quick lift for the 3rd floor, you reach the inviting and tastefully set interiors of the Scripbox office.
Initial Impressions:
Most of the audience were new, many of them had just come in to learn more about the awesome ideas that folks had cooked and submitted prior to the meetup. 38 of them had turned up and the house was full.
Introduction
Sameer gave a quick peak into what was lined up for the event.
Introduction to UX hack
Walk through of the challenge
Team activity
Snack break
A quick talk by Dhaval, Akshay
Presenting Ideas and feedback session
Wrap up along with networking
Akshay gave a crisp introduction to UX hack — Imagine a Dribble/Behance kinda portal for true UXers. We all know the anger that builds inside us when we are told UI=UX, Akshay and his team are trying to change that disbelief. Akshay also shared his experience about designing the My Airtel app, he went on to say that it took over 2 years to come up with a fully fledged solution and how he wished he had an opportunity to test his ideas at different phases and leverage the community’s opinion for a true user centered solution.
Dhaval shared a few unique insights from his experience, one of them was about understanding what users truly need, so that you could talk to the respective teams, build a solution that actually solves the users’ problem. He also encouraged folks to think right, “Do something so that users will have to do less”. A simple yet powerful guidelines we all need to follow.
Action time
Sameer kick started the hands on activity, the current challenge was from ‘Faircent’, it is a p2p platform to lend/borrow money. The problem statement looked something like this
The audience was divided into 4 groups, they were supplied with an handout of the problem statement, artboard, flipchart and all other stationary we UXers are fond of. The timer was set for 45 minutes to come up with unique, disruptive ideas. All the speakers were available for consultation if anybody needed any guidance/clarification.
Soon the place was filled with happy and healthy chatter, it was fascinating to see how folks mingled and worked as a team though they didn’t have enough time for introductions or to get acquainted.
It was noon already and Sameer had made arrangements for quick snacks, beverages. Participants enjoyed their break in the colorful and well decorated cafeteria which was perfect for networking and of course a cup of chai. I’ll let pictures do the talking for a bit.
It was time for presentations, one of the IDF member, Hemanth, volunteered to present first along with his team.
The review team provided apt feedback combined with real world examples and also backed it up with actual analytics of the products that they had worked upon.
Some of the learnings were
- Usage of imagery with little/no reasoning is definitely not a good practice. It helps grab all the attention but if there is no relatable path, it is just a waste of users’ time.
- Data consumption depends on where the user is, different environment yields to different experiences. For instance, let’s consider you wanna sip a cup of coffee. At home, you prefer a good mug. If you were out, you’d probably like a disposable cup ‘One has to design minding all the contexts of use’.
3. Do not rush into finding solutions.
Point of view/Problem statements -> Design -> Development -> Leads to Disaster.
Do enough research in the early phase, know your users well, analyze core components and then delve into solutions.
4. Touch points such as banners have to be carefully designed, play with the Image and content for best results. Do a lot of A/B testings.
5. Few questions to ask yourself when you are assigned a task are -
What is the problem statement, what are the hypothesis, assumptions, Data points, KPI.
If you can’t measure, you wouldn’t know how your product is performing in the wild.
6. Gamification is an important technique and has to be used tactfully. Do not have the user spend a lot of time to know the value of your product. The benefits and an overview of the product should be instantly revealed to avoid drop-offs.
7. Building trust in your product is paramount, ensure enough content, social proofing is available to meet the purpose.
8. Check what is popular and most widely used before connecting/integrating other services into your product. Ex: Digilocker — Not many of them use it.
9. Remove un-necessary items when you are designing for mobile, say for instance having a big logo, hardly readable tag line etc. The first half of the screen is very vital and you get the maximum attention in that space, make sure you have the right interaction reserved in that space.
10. A couple resources to refer
https://www.lemonade.com/ Insurance made easy, needs least amount of cognitive load to go through the product
https://conversionxl.com/ They offer conversion optimization services. You could signup for their little ebook that has a lot of tips on conversion. A quote mentioned in the book to get a taste of the theme “W. Edwards Deming: “If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.”
All good things come to an end and this event was no different. An absolutely pleasant conglomeration of the reviewers left us wanting for more. Stay tuned for the next meetup!
Chao!
