"When it comes to the software we use at work, it’s as if the Design Revolution never happened..."

Being a design crusader myself, I should (would) agree with this statement (read full article) in a jiffy. The article, its content and especially this statement has been playing on my mind ever since I read it.

A few caveats:

• I am totally signed up to bring about a design revolution within the world of enterprise software (been at it for close to a decade).
• I am a firm believer that people using software at work deserve/are entitled to better user experience
• There is a lot of inspiration out there that could be relevant for enterprise software

Having said so, as an insider of this world I have realized that we designers (including myself) might need to take a few steps back and ask ourselves the question - how do we define design revolution? and, what aspects should such a revolution cover for it to qualify as one?

My learning from this pondering exercise is as follows:

• End users are not (yet) active participants in the enterprise software world. We are quite far away from that day and I will look forward to it. 
• 'Consumerization' of IT is not (yet) widespread - despite how catchy the buzz word is. Enterprises - especially large ones, in industries like Oil & Gas, Utilities etc. are largely traditional in their way of working. Bringing about a change within these conglomerates and establishments is a very very slow  process. Getting access to the end user who works in an oil rig (e.g.) with heavy machinery is not an easy task - the stakeholders within such corporations often do not even consider it important enough to justify the efforts. 
• Enterprise software is an investment - a very expensive one. So the default expectations are for it to show business value - in numbers and figures...indirect costs like user training to use the software/ duplication of efforts at end user level due to bad usability etc is often too hard to measure, show tangible improvements and most of all are not on the top of the mind of CFO/CEO, CTO/CIO etc.  
• Desirability takes a different meaning in the enterprise software. The question is, 'desirable for whom?' Often priorities like scale, ROI, process optimization and other such KPIs define the desirability of a solution. So desirability for the IT department is often the answer. We need to understand this role well: 
• The user experience of a solution is often a judgement call of this department - if it is easy for them, it will be easy for every one else (cos there will be trainings anyway).   
• The design of these solutions are often a reflection of the awareness and imagination of this decision maker. 
• The IT department claims to know the needs of the end users. This is true but only partly - they only know about all the issues/troubles the end users have reported/complained to them about while using their tools (software). 
• The IT department often works on the goal to optimize things for the business units and the end users. Defining a new process and demanding everyone to change their way of working is often the approach taken.     

So perhaps the factors that qualify as design revolution in the enterprise software world are along the lines of:

• Business process design - they may not look and work as nicely as we desire but they bring immense value to the corporations. E.g. to be able to track the entire supply chain process in an integrated system. 
• Visualization of immense amount of data for better decision making on one screen - might consist only of charts and graphs - details of which only a domain expert may understand. Nevertheless to this expert it brings immense value. 
• Getting different disparate systems (hardware and software) to speak to each other

Adding value is an integral part of design. Perhaps these aspects are more technically inclined but perhaps could be qualifiers as aspects of design revolutions.

Are we designers cutting ourselves too short and making things worse for us by saying, the 'user experience' is not optimum hence there is no design revolution?

Maybe we need to open our minds to acknowledge and appreciate these process designs that are changing the world people work, changing businesses even though they may not have the experience we associate with Apple/popular consumer solutions?

Food for thought!!! 

A new perspective

Last year I got out of my comfort zone and got myself enrolled into a B school (Said Business School, Oxford) to complete a post graduate course in Strategy and Innovation. Having been a D school person throughout my career, this gave me an opportunity to be amidst CEO's/ corporate strategists, entrepreneurs. I learnt a lot from my class mates and the course content. The course content was completely new territory for me and it gave me a completely new perspective to things - how interlinked corporate strategy is to innovation, how this breed of people think and function.

My goal obviously was not only to learn new things but also find relevant connections of what I was learning to what I do - design.

Here are a few snapshots that are especially relevant to large companies:

• Having learnt the theory of strategy, I realized how:
• difficult it is to define a corporate strategy that is not too high level and is not too detailed either.  
• misunderstood and misused the term strategy is (like so many other buzz words)
• important it is to appropriately cascade the strategy to make it relevant to the various departments. At this level a well cascaded strategy should be like a well written design brief - it should provide a sense of direction to people and motivate people to think of ways to achieve it. 
• Start ups in the technology industry seem to do well/ better than larger companies not because they all spend a lot of time talking to users and understanding their pain points - it definitely helps if they do. But besides doing this (if so), they are forced to research the market, they often do not wait for years to perfect their solution before it is released, they are agile enough to quickly iterate and even get back to the drawing board if needed based on how their solution is making money, being adopted by the intended customers etc. 
• True entrepreneurial spirit is quite hard to achieve within the comforts of operating inside a large company, with the luxury of having access to resources start ups struggle to have. 

• There is way too much fluff about design/design thinking in the corporate world right now with very little meaning and real support behind it for successful execution. 
• Very few companies place design at a strategic level - a position where design can influence corporate strategy. 
• The Design Thinking venn diagram (feasibility, viability and desirability) is over used and while it makes a lot of sense, very rarely are all these dimensions working together at the same time, at the same level of importance and the same level of granularities. 
• Given the fact that the 3 dimensions most often are not working together at the same time, the multi-dimensional' team rarely covers these three aspects. The team might be multi-dimensional in other ways, but in my opinion that doesn't help. A diverse (culturally, varied educational backgrounds etc) makes for a fun team but does not necessarily further the cause of addressing the 3 dimensions in the venn diagram.
• Although Design Thinking is based on sound principles, the attempt to make it seem 'easy' and in the process of meaninglessly standardizing the process, it has unfortunately become reduced to workshops with colorful props; a set of dogmatic to dos - user personas, user pain points, brainstorming...it has lost it's essence of taking a holistic approach.  
• A purely 'grass roots' approach to Design does not get too far. There has to be an HONEST understanding of the nuances of design and SUPPORT (not force, not buy-in) for it from the top (senior management). 

Surprisingly, I had very few classmates who were from the IT industry. A key learning for me in the context of the IT industry is, it is one industry that challenges a lot of conventional corporate methodologies owing to it's pace of change and resulting possibilities. 

The 'non-creative', realist

• Relatively clean work desk?
• No Lego blocks around you?
• No geeky toys?

Sorry, "you're not the creative, design thinker we're looking for."
Judgements and stereotypes have never bothered me.

Too often the 'we can change the world' mind-set (which I believe is a positive one) works against the design community because the mind sets makes them forget that they can indeed change the world...but not ALONE. Designers who are often propagating collaboration forget to collaborate themselves with key stakeholders (e.g. those that need to sell solutions etc.) - worse, they create a sense of superiority - we have the ideas (which is rarely the problem), you guys figure out how to make it work.

Sorry!! This doesn't cut it for me.

IDEO's unpreparedness reveals the same pitfall.

Without business model innovation, Design Thinking cannot succeed on its own. So called Design Thinkers themselves forget to look at viability and feasibility AS EQUALS! That's not setting a good example for preaching DT to the masses.

Of labels, titles and group think

"a design thinker, not a UX designer."
"a UX designer."
"a Design Strategist"
"a Creative Director"
"a Product Designer"
"an Experience Designer"

Owing to the popularity of Design Thinking, there is (once again) a rush among design professionals to associate themselves to the appropriate label/title.

It's COOL if your title has a 'thinker' or a 'strategist' attached to it. If not, you are reduced to a menial 'designer' who creates UIs by moving things around and makes things look pretty.
The less hands on you are the cooler you are. So go scramble for that thinker/strategist titles...before they are all gone.

There now seems to be a new 'us versus them' - no its not between designers and developers. But its between the thinkers and the menial doers.

While the designers try to figure this out, there are plenty of people out there who have no clue what Design Thinking is and are yet living by its principles in everything they produce.

I for one am trying not to be caught in the group think that I observe around me. 

I wonder why do we professionals seek some kind of legitimacy with our job titles...

Demonstrations galore

The whole world seems to be in demonstration mode - lokpal bill to fight corruption in India, the entire uprising in the middle east, the 'occupy' movement, austerity measures across Europe...

People across different parts of the world seem to be totally frustrated with any form of governance because the real problems of the people have not really been solved over decades as political parties shifted hands/ autocrats continued to shove down their authority; corporations got richer; the rich continued to evade taxes and got richer...

There is growing mistrust of large corporations and their ways of doing business. There is growing realization and rising against inequalities in various aspects of every day life.

As a designer, I think about the 'context' of things around solutions I come up with/propose. My mind wanders...in such a state of unrest, uncertainty, distrust among regular people towards their governments and corporations, what is it that will attract this mass audience and keep their sustained interest?

In my opinion, these demonstrations are a good sign. Despite the current tumultuous times, in the long run, I see the following things happening:

• I think it will bring about the need for increased 'people-centricity' 
• 'The common man' will not to be taken for granted. Things will HAVE to bring value to the common man in the day to day life. 
• Institutions and businesses that are more honest and transparent will do better than those that are not.
• Institutions and businesses will be forced to reconstruct themselves and earn their respect and credibility back from the consumers. 

(These seem to reflect some of the principles of 'good design.')

Until we get there, designing for the consumers will be very tricky - especially if the solution involves behavior change - especially if the solution comes from one of the distrusted industries...Consumers will remain highly skeptical about such solutions. Consumers will begin to prefer local, decentralized options and would even be willing to take some matters on their own hands, find their own ways to get things done - work their way around the 'system.' 

In such a context, consumers are more likely to trust their friends and family a lot more. As a designer I think the community aspect has become an important one to keep in mind while designing solutions for some years to come.

On another note, I think, it's high time governments and large corporations got some training in 'design thinking.' ;) - at the very least, learn to empathize!!

Job description ?

I have often found it hard to describe to people what exactly do I do without a long explanation.
I think this statement below sums it up well:
"There are a lot of things that technology could do for us, but the question is, what do we WANT it to do for us and HOW. "

The 'what do we want it to do for us' is pretty much the space design thinkers like me operate in.

Given the pretext of 'it's technology, it can do whatever you want...' I am always inspired to find out exactly how we leverage technology and solve real problems or redefine how people do things :)

Why design thinking is a little more than pure common sense

I shrink every time I hear someone explaining Design Thinking and equating it with common sense.
While the procedure to follow the methods might sound like common sense, actually practicing the tasks involved is far from common sense. They are very difficult and take a lot of practice to master. Often Design Thinking fails when there is not enough know how about the 'how to.'

The fact that we Design Thinkers are forever having to justify the methodology, coaching people to adopt this methodology indicates that what is seemingly common sense isn't quite so. There are reasons behind this:
In a nutshell, I would call it, 'experience kills innovation.'

A basic tenet of Design Thinking is to have an outside in perspective. Talk to customers, end consumers, experts...

• Most often, for people working in a certain field know a lot about their domain. Hence, it is extremely difficult to switch modes and be completely open to LEARNING from customers/end consumers/experts in the domain. 
• Imagine when you were a child and didn't have a clue about somethings, but were curious to learn. For most of us, this is very hard to do as adults.
• Equally difficult is to refrain from putting your ideas on to the minds of the person you are talking with. We are not there to have a discussion about our individual ideas. We are talking to them to understand how they work, their joy, problems etc. 
• Speaking to customers (the decision makers in the business); end consumers (who use the solutions); experts and other stakeholders often results in diverse amount of content. This is where it becomes tricky, looking at the business motivations, user satisfaction, legal complications etc all together creates a big picture, which can be overwhelming and often shunned off as being irrelevant for project scope. It is important to keep this big picture in the forefront so there solution meets with least resistance by the people involved. There are trade offs to be made.
• One we have all this data, the challenge is to synthesize. The big challenge is to STICK to and/or clearly distinguish what was heard from the customers/end consumers/experts and one's own ideas. To begin with one has to stick to data points heard from the people spoken with and not divert into ideas coming from within the team. (there is a time and place for that later...) 

While I do believe in the philosophy of 'every one can be a Design Thinker', I would not want to run the risk of making it sound simpler than it is by calling it common sense. Like any other set of skill sets that can be learnt, this too takes practice and time to perfect.

Behavior change

"Behavior change starts with an understanding of society and it's values. To change a system, Behavior Change is often required at every level."
Came across this amazing statement. I would now use it loud and clear on all the people who tell me, "you cannot change a system." It's a difficult task, but not an impossible one. YES!!!

Cultural Contexts and design?

Delhi Airport: The airport looks a lot like airports in the US with carpeted floors. 
The time we got off, there were plenty of Indians too. Interestingly, during immigration, most of them were in the queue of OCI (overseas citizen of India)/foreign passport holders. The queue for Indian passport holders was the shortest.

I did notice some design flaws in the airport. A big one for me was, there was almost NO information to a first time visitor that indicated the existence of 2 other domestic terminals.

The toilet entrance have big poster size photographs of an Indian woman indicating the Women’s toilet and an Indian man indicating the Men’s toilet. At first instance, these big photographs can be easily misunderstood to be some kind of advertisements.

The domestic terminals are not very close to the International terminal. Different domestic flight carriers fly from different domestic terminals. There is no information about this available on display in the International terminal. Once you figure out which domestic terminal to get to, the next challenge is to figure out how to get there. There are very few information desks and depending on the time of the day, they may/may not be staffed.

The exit signs show signs for Taxi, Car Rentals etc but none for Inter-terminal Shuttles.

So? The only way is to ASK. Ask a security staff/ staff at a coffee shop…ask anyone who might know. You learn that there is a counter outside the exit gate of the International terminal for the inter-terminal shuttles.  Get out of this gate and yet there are no signs. In one non-descript corner is a small counter for the inter-terminal shuttles. Present the tickets of your onward journey and you will be told the number of a relevant bus station. At this bus station, there is no bus. The bus parked at the adjacent station is also going to the domestic terminals and is waiting for more passengers before it leaves.
Shall I get into that one? Or shall I stay put at the bus station I was told to get a bus from?

As an Indian, asking people and finding my way through places is inherent in me. But having traveled a lot through international airports, I was just putting myself in the shoes of a first time visitor. In most international airports, one can get around without asking anyone anything – using maps/signage etc. So I wonder if there needs to be some form of standardization in International airports so it’s a one time learning process for travelers?

On the other hand, can't we just work on our culture of ‘asking’ and design with it in mind? That's what we do to ask for directions, to find out things...We are a country with a large population and human capital. We also have a large English speaking population. So why not leverage it? We do not necessarily have to go the direction of automation and/or self-service. We could potentially have our own unique approach to address these issues by making it equally intuitive and adoptable.

The aspect about demographics

When we go out to do research, we often meet professionals in the age group of 30-50.
Many of us in the design teams belong to the same age group.
Ironically, the solution is targeted to be used by the future generation. 

While I talk to a current user groping with this sudden boom of (e.g.) social media, I need to design a solution for a generation that pretty much grew up with it - cannot think of a life without it. Currently, this future generation is perhaps in their teens or getting a higher education.

Although, there are lot of talks about the aging populations, the new workforce etc. we spend so little time gaining a better understanding and insights into this potential new workforce.

Wouldn't it be great if we could invest time interacting with university grads etc to understand how they perceive their work places, work practices, tools etc.

Work in progress

I love how a low investment, rough document sparks so many discussions and conversations around it.
'Back of a napkin' is motivating me to keep things at stick figure level and it really really works.
It also somehow makes people look at your slide, maybe be a bit amused with it and basically, wake up and pay attention :)

Opening up

A friend of mine recently opted to buy the Samsung Galaxy instead of the Apple iPhone - for various reasons.

Samsung Galaxy is not the same as the Apple iPhone, however, it is really quite good by itself. It runs on the Google Android platform. Samsung among many others is part of the Open Handset Alliance.
The alliance has mobile operators; handset manufacturers; software companies; semiconductor companies...

It made me wonder that over the years, the consumer space has become to open and collaborative; companies are partnering with each other in ways that make sense to come up with meaningful products and services to consumers in a very desirable manner.

In my eyes such alliances reflect the realization that one company cannot do everything on it's own.

On the other hand, in the enterprise world, I still see companies trying to build a lot of things internally - not opening up to team up with expert players and collaboratively working on shipping meaningful products and services to customers in a desirable way.

There is so much innovation happening in the consumer space, so fast, the enterprise world is merely catching up. I feel, the least we can do is partner with some of the players in the consumer space. I have heard the usual arguments of security, complexity bla bla often as reasons why the enterprise world does not work on this model. I am sure these are aspects that are very important in any kind of application.
I don't believe the enterprise is unique.

Just because a user is using an enterprise software, does he/she have to endure bad design?

‘Dogmatism’ and User Centered Design

The ‘intention’ of every ‘process/methodology’ is to ‘enable’ something/some people to ‘achieve’ a bigger/higher goal.


However, becoming ‘dogmatic’ about any ‘process/methodology’ has the reverse effect.

Having listened to; engaged in intense discussions with practitioners of ‘User Centered Design’ particularly in ‘software’ industry, I get the feeling that the User Experience community has become too dogmatic about its processes and methodologies.

At first we in this community were struggling to make our presence felt, and now that there is a general recognition of this field, we are going overboard and preaching that User Centered Design is the ONLY way forward – to innovation; to increase customer satisfaction…answer to all our problems. Other professionals within the ‘eco-system’ of a typical software company perceive this message as telling them, “the way you do things is wrong, we will teach you how to do things right.”

With such a ‘message,’ one cannot expect the desired ‘co-operation’ and ‘collaboration’ that we seek.

Secondly, we have failed to adapt and/or evolve to changes around us. Business goals are becoming more aggressive – ‘more for less,’ but we stick to our methods and practices. “Sure, we can get end user feedback; however, it takes 4 weeks.”

As things become more and more ‘agile’ – this is simply not acceptable. We have to reflect on our methods and practices and be innovative to meet new demands.

We must remember, in most software companies, ‘UX’ has only been ‘recognized’ as a competency to have. We have not yet reached the stage where we can dictate terms (hope we don’t) and be dogmatic about our methods. It will only turn people off and reassure them that this aspect of product development is not feasible. We have to step down from our ivory towers and engage with the entire community in order to ‘change mindsets’ in an ‘organic’ and ‘sustainable’ manner.

(I have firsthand experience and reason enough to believe this slow but organic approach works)

Thirdly, we have to understand the fact that a product has various dimensions to it. These keep growing – sustainability being the latest one. Perspectives from the ‘end users’ are just ONE such dimension and is by no means the MOST IMPORTANT one. Being philanthropic about ‘end user’ needs alone will not find a place in the world of ‘business.’

Just as we in the community become activists to demand ‘respect’ for our competencies from others, we need to walk the talk too. We need to respect the perspectives and priorities from others too.

They are all equally important. We need to respect the fact that other competencies have equally valuable inputs to provide to the cycle of product development.

Collaboration, synthesis and shared understanding of the goal among multi-disciplinary team members are the KEY to successful product definition.

Fourthly, I have often heard the debate about ‘need to improve designer: developer ratio’ in order to improve the ‘user experience’ of products effectively. Sadly, ‘more people’ does not necessarily result in ‘better.’ The population within UX communities are growing progressively, however, in the field of software, there are not too many game changing products out there from a user experience perspective. One might say, “Oh because we are so few people, we have not had the chance to do so.”

In my opinion, we just have not pushed the boundaries enough.

We have not bothered to learn from our peers – product designers/ fashion designers / game designers /automobile designers … are we too egoistic to do so?

In most of the above mentioned areas of design, the ‘designer: engineer’ ration is much more imbalanced than the utopia we are striving for in software companies.

The key is, in these other areas of design, the ‘designer’ is one AMONG other disciplines and people talk to each other a lot more than we do.


We need to ‘earn’ a seat by the table and not ‘demand’ it.
It’s time we evolved.

whoever said, "only C users need dashboards" was wrong!!

(C user = casul user - someone who is typically in the senior management cadre and personally uses software applications occassionly. most often has an assistant doing the tasks for them).

I am no 'C' user.
I am a regular employee within a user experience team, in the role of defining user interface concepts for a product. The requirements of these could come from different functional areas; result of some customer complaints; technical enhancements; user needs etc. However each of this source is stored in a DIFFERENT location and format. NONE of them talk to each other.

I am desperate to have a dashboard. At the least something like an iGoogle that allows me to PULL information from these different sources to ONE page. As a 'designer' it would be extremely helpful for me to see all of these information placed together - to infer from them; SYNTHESISE them and come up with a rounded/holistic design proposal.

> enabling design thinking demands having 'infrastructure' in place to work efficiently...and spend quality time doing 'core' tasks.