Srikanth's Blog

The popular opinion is that a film is made thrice. First on the writing table, second during principal photography, and third on the edit table. However, I think a film is made four times: screenplay, storyboard, shoot, and edit. The storyboard is the next powerful thing after the script and it can make or break your film. A storyboard is the ultimate show-and-tell tool for a filmmaker to craft and share their creative vision with the crew, cast, and other stakeholders. There are numerous benefits to storyboarding your film. First things first, it helps you translate the screenplay and your vision into a visual format — one which can be understood by one and all, razing down cultural and language barriers. It helps your crew to plan accordingly for every shot, well in advance during the pre-production phase and not put them in an awkward and confused position on the day of the shoot. This saves time, money, and energy as your principal photography gains from a clear visual blueprint. S...

The fundamental challenge with online selling is matching up with the conventional and naturally immersive brick and mortar store shopping experiences. Since the beginning days of eCommerce, all efforts have been in the direction of recreating that matchless physical shopping experience online. Even though we have great technology at our disposal, why do we still face those tricky and spotty shopping experiences with some great brands? Not every online portal gives you an Amazon or a Zappos experience today. I think this stark difference in user experience is due to various factors like platform constraints, resource limitations or a simple lack of vision in building and leveraging the power of product design and experience systems at scale. An empowered seller experience enables a great shopper experience. Most brands use some sort of commerce management platforms or invest in custom design and development of their eCommerce portals to craft a unique experience for their online shoppe...

Jugaad  in Hindi means a resourceful productivity hack. There are stories of people using washing machines to make lassi. (yogurt with water, sugar, and various seasonings or fruits). Converting two wheelers into mini farm tractors and 6 seat riders, building home made air conditioners, and the countless interesting Jugaad stories with physical products and services. This got me thinking on the Jugaad for digital products and spoke to a few people around this topic. Looks like there is no barrier for our brilliant minds to mould a product to our advantage and create unique experiences. In mid 2020, LinkedIn launched a voice recording feature to record the pronunciation of a user’s name on their profile. Presuming the whole idea was to pull down linguistic and cultural barriers and bring people closer through correct name pronunciations and great first impressions. This behaviour is only natural when you meet someone for the first time, outside your culture. However, users use this ...

The words count, not the word count.

As product designers, our interaction and visual language is based on brand and product design systems. However, have you ever thought about creating and extending these systems for your users? A design language is not only for designer consumption, it should extend to your users. Then only it makes sense to call it a design system per se. Only deep thinking brands understand the power of designing systems for their users. Designing easy-to-understand and consistent product identification and labelling systems is imperative for brands/products to facilitate ease of purchase across borders, build brand loyalty and garner market share. Digital product designers should observe and take cues from the global denim brand Levi's. I think as a brand they are very clear in terms of their user/customer experience strategy by building a global identification systems for their products. As a consumer and designer, I could experience this with two brands. Levi's & Apple. Just by knowing...

If you're new to this computer-networking term called piggybacking, here is my simple definition. I learnt this term in my engineering days. "Replying to a message and sending something additional along with your standard response." Well, the definition might not be totally correct in technical terms, however I hope you get the essence. (Basically you send something extra to save an additional trip) I think piggybacking is a fantastic way to improve the user experience, considering you deeply understanding the customer's journey for your product or service. One should keenly identify critical touch points in order to persuade a user to continue the journey in the smoothest manner possible. Deep understanding of your user journey, opens up the right engagement opportunities. Let's look at a few touch points and examples across a variety of digital products. Post Sign ups When a user signs up on a shopping app, what's the ideal next step you want them to do? You...

Communication gaps seem to be directly proportional to the number of communication channels today. Well, Ideally this should be inversely proportional. That’s the whole point of invention in the first place. Even with a plethora of communication channels available at our disposal, we’re not always in a position of clarity, when it comes to interacting with the world around us, and the gap, only seems to be widening. The best way to communicate effectively is to understand context, culture, and begin with the end in mind. Work backwards on the objectives and state your case clearly to achieve them. The cultural nuance in a piece of communication can bring in the required connectedness. The fundamental challenge with communication is people tend to weave their own narratives, based on what they understand, or what they don’t want to understand, from a piece of communication. So it’s more of an attitude, comprehension, and cultural problem as well, and not really a channel problem alone. ...

AI can create art; yet, it can’t experience art, nor the process of creating it. This is not a perspective about whether AI can replace your job. It’s about AI not replacing you as the artist, who can soulfully experience art, enjoy the creative process, and the artistic outcome. That’s where we shine. I doubt even if AGI or SGI can have the same feelings about creating art and the art itself. Well, if they arrive someday, let’s welcome them to the party. In fact, AI or the artificial being in itself is a remarkable piece of art, as it stems from the great human mind. It’s our ultimate creation that can continue our creation and legacy. As humans, we create art to enjoy the process, and not mere outcomes. We’re not generative artists like generative AI. We’re not machines to take input, generate output, and move on to the next. As artists, we live to experience the process of creation, as much as our creation itself, and convey a point of view. Prompting is way different from creating ...