Srikanth's Blog

This is a chapter from my book The Art of Hiring UX Designers: A Quick Guide for Design Managers Chapter 2: The Culture Catalyst As a design leader, it’s all the more important to emphasize and address the aspect of diversity. Only a truly diverse group of design professionals can build a winning user experience that is diverse and inclusive. Diversity is not just about organizational compliance — It is about being more just and human-centred at work. Understanding this perspective is of paramount importance — when you’re venturing into building your design team. To begin with, take stock of your team composition and study the group’s diversity in various aspects like ethnicity, colour, age group, gender, location, prior work experience, educational qualification, domain specialization, and core competencies. Check your premises. You might be unknowingly building a homogeneous team, that thinks alike, works alike, and in some extreme cases — where everyone looks alike. What’s your dive...

Are you obsessed about the UX process?   Does the product matter over process? Fact - Users give a damn to your process, unless you're selling that over the product. Every UX designer goes through this phase of being obsessed with the design process. At times we even fight endlessly to diligently follow a process, even in uncalled scenarios. (I have been there too) Well, there is no doubt that the design process is immensely important in designing a product and delivering the UX promise. However, excessive process importance over context, business and user value only kills its efficacy. There is no product sans process. However most clients don't pay you for the process nor the user buys or uses your product based on your process diligence. If you're working for a services or a consulting firm, all your clients care about is the end outcome of how the product solves the problem in the best possible manner. The questions that matter to client are, does it grow the business a...

Life begins at 40.  You’re not too young, you’re not too old. You spent time to get educated, studied diverse subjects, gained some diverse work experience, learnt some hard lessons, faced few setbacks, experienced some success, read substantially, gained some credibility, lost some reputation, made some money, lost some money, made some friends, made some enemies, built some skills, explored various interests, and most importantly, you experienced some rich amount of life, wherein you learnt deeply about yourself, discovered, and even rediscovered yourself by this age. You're at the midpoint which presents you a great opportunity to pause, reflect on the path taken, and contemplate on the path to be taken. 40 is the perfect time to begin your life’s work. Begin! PS: I wrote this to myself when I turned 40. 

Book : All-in On AI: How Smart Companies Win Big with Artificial Intelligence Authors : Thomas H. Davenport, Nitin Mittal You must read this book, if you want to understand the business side of AI and why some companies are already winning big, by investing in AI and rebuilding their core business infused with AI. Thomas & Nitin have studied several companies and picked some interesting case studies across industries, to showcase the impact of AI cutting across various aspects of an organization. The authors have classified companies into five categories based on their investment and progress on the AI journey. 1) AI fueled 2) Transformers 3) Pathseekers 4) Starters 5) Underachievers Read more to know where you organization or clients stand today. This book also has basics on the subject, and you won't feel lost in the jargon. Easy to read, digest, and think about applying this in your work. You can find case studies of Capital One, PING AN, Cotiviti, Airbus, Disney and...

“A house without books is like a room without windows.” - Horace Mann Even if people choose to invest 1% of the spiralling home-ownership cost, they can easily build a home library that can help them recover 100% cost of their home. By investing in your home library, you'll learn more, earn more, gain more knowledge, as reading and learning can open up new possibilities and opportunities in your life. The best part is everyone in the family can benefit from reading.  Did you know that in Finland, when a baby is born, the government - maternity and child health clinics give the family a bag of books. It's called the "Book Bag to Every Baby Born in Finland" program enabling parents and children to read together at the earliest opportunity, bond, and encourage the child to read for an empowering future. Government programs need to have a vision for at least a century. Programs like this can help in advancing intellectual capabilities of citizens, advancing the nation...

In the world of software products, we hear a lot of about the importance data-driven decision making. We should double down on this and even bring in a data-driven compensation system for leaders. Here I talk about product design leaders, however the logic should pretty much apply for one and all working towards the success of a specific product. What if we tie our salary compensation to the outcomes of our work? Are UX leaders ready for a design-driven and data-driven compensation structure? We all agree that product design has a direct impact on the business numbers. Products are driven by rich data patterns to improve the user experience tied back with business objectives. If product design is driven by data, why not the compensation of product designers? Having said this, products must have clearly defined the UX metrics. The question is can we tie these UX metrics to the performance of design leaders and product designers? Companies could pay for results delivered as they eventual...

User engagement is all about the right chemistry. Here's how you can improve your product adoption with first-time users and build engagement. This is the immutable first rule. User Experience is a continuous and meaningful dialogue with the user. Know how to start and have a dialogue. When we design products or interfaces, one should design for generating the right chemistry. Designers should deeply understand, what drives the user in a specific context. Know that your product has potential to think like a thoughtful system that understands people by appealing to their right emotional set. To keep it simple, this is empathy in action. For instance, on a payment page, you might not want to appeal to the user's curiosity and sell more products. Understand the user's primary mindset in a given context. Map user agenda to business agenda. Products should know exactly, when to talk, when they shouldn't, what to talk and what they shouldn't. Context drives the conversati...

If tools are everything, the best writer would be the one who has the best pen. Likewise the best photographer would be the one who has the best camera in the world, and so on. It’s not the tool that makes the creative man. It’s knowing the subject fundamentals, understanding objectives, researching, deep thinking on problems, exploring ideas and generating distinctive solutions, is what makes a creative person and master of your craft. The same applies for UX Design. It’s disturbing to see an excessive emphasis on Figma and other tools in our industry. Right from bootcamps to job descriptions, one can notice the Figma hype. Too much importance on tooling and less on thinking leads to hiring dispensable talent, and in turn generates mediocre products and brands. (Not good for talent as well as businesses) Tools are only a means to an end. Customers don't pay for the tools. They pay for the value derived from your craft. They don't care what tools you use. All they care about i...