How I Design from the start — Guest-post from a design enthusiast

A guest-post from a design enthusiast and UI Engineer at Swiggy

I am a UI Engineer at Swiggy. So I thought I should share how I do it and also learn from you a little. So here is a start to how my heart and my brain work when I design something.

“Great Design means an Effortless Experience.”

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

First, even before I jump into putting a pencil to the paper, I always ask three tiny questions that help me throughout the process. The questions are tiny, but to be honest, the answers might not be.

What, How, and Why.

What

The question What is the first step to design. What do the users want? The answer to this question is usually very vague and more or less lies on the lines of ‘I need to be able to find my songs faster’ or ‘I never find what I am looking for’, or even ‘I need this data on the front page’. The user’s response to this question just gives me an idea of what the user might want (which might or might not always be the exact thing they need). And that’s where the other two questions come into play.

How

The question How is multi-layered. The very first How question that I often ask is How does it work now?. This question really is applicable only to an existing process that causes the need or the pain. For a completely new process, I ask How would this work?. Now, this case of a new process might give extremely vague and sometimes incorrect responses. Digging deeper with the next question paints a much better picture of everything together.

And the final question, Why

The question Why is the most important of them all, as the answer to this one question is the foundation of creating something great! So I always ask why does the user need this? On digging deeper and probing the user more, I learn about the exact needs and the pain points to target. The question Why gives me the purpose. Funny thing, this tiny question also helps the users understand the exact reasons why they want, that they want. On the path to answering the question Why the user often realizes all the extravagant things that they ask while answering the What, are not exactly important and helps get rid of the noise. So as I said, this crucial question is just the beginning of a great design.

We all know and love Netflix. This is how the three questions might have looked like:

• What do you want?

Oh! I just want a single place to watch movies. I’m too tired of looking for a movie and trying to find the best video and audio quality. It’s just too much effort. I oftentimes end up giving up and re-watch old things.

• How do you watch movies now?

I just try to find it on some pirated sites or have to go out and buy it, which costs a hole in my pocket, or find the different parts on multiple websites. It sometimes takes additional time and patience for the movie to download. So I have to wait for everything to fall into place magically before I sit and watch the movie in peace.

• Why do you want it?

It’s too stressful to think of a movie to watch after a long and tiring day. The stress is real, believe me. Finding the movie with the right audio and video quality is a whole new effort. It does not give me what I am truly looking for - some relaxation! If I have everything in one place I don’t have to look for a movie for hours and hours and can spend my time being lazy on the couch and do absolutely nothing. It's a constant battle between what’s available and what I actually am looking forward to watching and I am rarely lucky to have both. It would really help me forget about my boss riding my ass all day.

Let’s just break down the problem and identify the high-level design aspects from the above conversation. We’ll dive deeper into the finer details soon.

Problem to solve: Ease of finding a movie to watch

High-level design aspects —

1. Categorize the movies - helps find the right movies in the right place
2. Show what I might want on the top so that I don’t spend time around the website - helps with little or no mental effort into thinking and finding what I want
3. Should not involve too much physical effort - after a tiring day, I don’t want to do much physical effort of too many clicks and pages and screens by the time I decide what I want to watch. It’s already a long day, don’t want to make it worse.
4. The entire experience must be calming and effortless - helps be lazy and calm without adding on to the mental frustration

In the coming sections, we will see how to go about every single point I listed above. You can try the same for different websites and mobile apps. It’s a fun little exercise when you’re bored out of your mind!

Here’s a fun little UX design example: Netflix auto plays the shows with only a 4-second gap between the episodes, just enough to create a separation and breathing room and also to keep the viewer hooked to watch just one more episode. The 4-second number took a ton of research, but hey, it works like a charm! We’ve all been there, watching just one more episode till 3 AM. *guilty*

This is only a tiny glimpse of how I start my design process, and over the course of multiple stories, I will be sharing more fun and subtle examples of brilliant designs.

Happy Learning!