Unifying Science in Design with Navneet Nair (PhonePe)
A good design depends not only on the art and craft but also on the science behind a product, and that is why a design team must consist of people from various domains. A good design team can help the members grow and adapt to the constant changes in user needs. It also helps to provide clarity about user diversity to make the user experience more inclusive. But simultaneously, building a solid and sound design team that functions seamlessly can be a challenging task. So how can designers build functional design teams and create inclusive experiences?
To know more about this theme, in the 49th episode, we interact with Navneet Nair, Director of Product Design at PhonePe. With over two decades of experience as a design leader, he holds expertise in user experience design, interaction design, user interface design, and product design. Let’s know more about his journey and experiences in the latest episode of the “Avantika Designeering Series Podcast”, “Unifying Science in Design.”
Rohit Lalwani: FinTech is transforming how financial services are being packaged and delivered to consumers from an experience, access and cost savings perspective. They require a total understanding of the business technology process and a great deal of analysis and testing with users. The question that I have for you is what are some of the effective FinTech UX principles and opportunities that designers must be aware of?
Navneet: I did touch upon some of the core principles that we have at PhonePe, which is the whole point of being clear, consistent, and simple. But one of the core, the underlying thing is for us to move the users from competence to proficiency, which primarily is to say that users can see growth in themselves by using our products. This is something that I have learned from a book by Kathy Sierra which talks about the fact that nobody buys a software product because the product is good. They buy a software product because the product makes them better at what they do. This is something that we completely believe in and we want the users of our platform to become better at whatever they do, whether it is making the right financial decision or making payments as quickly as they could and saving money while doing so.
So that is the core principle that would help us but also would help a lot of other products during similar situations that help deliver a lot of value for the users.
Rohit Lalwani: While you were talking about picking inspiration from a book and the other element, one of the other thoughts that I was thinking at the same time was about the investigative phase. Among all stages of problem-solving, the investigative phase is the most crucial because it reveals how to approach the design problem itself. The question that I have for you is how can designers investigate and recognize human values, cultures and diversity helping in the right direction towards creating a sustainable solution.
Navneet: So it is true that designers understand the users and the best way to develop this empathetic understanding of the user is through contact. One of the things that we need to do is probably do some sort of a contextual study of how users are performing what they are doing. However, what we have found is that once in a hundred years there is a situation that makes it difficult for us to do. This pandemic is one of those situations. What we find is that it is difficult for us to go down and meet those situations.
What we have found useful is sometimes to use visualization techniques that can help us gain empathy without actually having that contact. It is something that we need to start putting into place.
I have written a couple of articles where you can understand how to develop empathy without necessarily being in firsthand contact. There is absolutely no other way of doing it, you need to have firsthand contact as the best possible way of developing empathy, but in case you do not have that what we can do is we can visualize our users to be very close to us. We have to think about us developing features for our friends themselves. How would we do that for our parents or our siblings? Based on that, we can think about them as real users and then start developing for them. This helps us develop empathy for the user. While it is not the replacement for the investigative contextual analysis that is required. I think in this pandemic, we do need to make some changes and still gain user empathy. And this is one way that we can do that.
Rohit Lalwani: Designers treat mobile and desktop as two different creatures with opposing needs. However, when we look at it from the user’s intent, it does not drastically change whether they are using their applications or website. My question is can complexity in applications provide a good user experience and how can designers embrace complexity while designing applications in such a way that it is not complicated?
Navneet: That is a complicated question. So I like how Einstein puts it. “Everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler” and the same is true for user experience. As a designer, we, definitely strive for simplicity wherever possible, but then making things too simple can also be an issue.
For example, if you are designing an interface with trading stocks, now there is a certain amount of complexity that is a seasoned top trader is used to, and when we are providing that, there are certain controls that they expect. But then if you were to allow normal users to purchase stocks, they may not need that set of competencies. The seasoned trader is used to thinking of stocks in the number of stocks they buy, whereas a normal user might be thinking, “Do I have so much money to invest?” and this subtle difference tells you that there is no one way of looking at it. There is no one way of looking at simplicity or complexity. You have to look at it from where the user is coming in from, and then design accordingly.
We as designers need to understand who is the user coming in and provide that thing accordingly. So sometimes that complexity is required because that user expects it.
While you can make it simple within that what you are doing is you are giving the right set of controls. It is not complex, but it is about how much control someone needs that does introduce complexity. At the same time, we can still strive for what is the best optimum design that we can do for that particular user. It is completely contextual as to who the user is and we as designers need to be able to deliver the right interface for that.
Rohit Lalwani: This brings me to my last question. At Avantika University, we coined this term as “Designeering” which is the base ideology and philosophy on which we operate. The question that I have for you is, do you see designing technology blend in your field and your process? What is your validation of this concept and philosophy?
Navneet: Absolutely. I do not think we need to start thinking of a design as a vertical function but a horizontal function. Design needs to be present in absolutely everything that we do, whether you are designing software or industrial design or you might be doing hotel management and that also needs design as part of it. I think design needs to be looked at as a horizontal function. Now, maybe you are looking at designeering and it isn’t a wonderful way of saying, “Okay, I am bringing the horizontal aspect of design into engineering” Especially with the way computers are progressing, you see a lot more power being given to the computers. Very soon we will have machine learning and artificial intelligence, which are reaching super-intelligence level or even AGI levels at any point in time. With that set in place, what is going to be the role of not just designers or engineers, but all of us as a whole? We need to start thinking about how we will be delivering for the next generation, which is probably going to come up very soon.
Having all of these horizontals with design, ethics and even philosophy being a layer, all of these are horizontal things that need to be taught at every level, right from school.
This is just one aspect of it. I hope more universities will start thinking about these holistically and not just approach education in silos saying that “I am going to create engineers, I am going to create accountants in my university”, but rather have these holistic leaders for tomorrow that can be created by blending of all of these kinds of fields that are out.
Mr Navneet shares more insights on design and technology, to know more about the same, head on to our latest Podcast episode. For more details, do visit our profile.
