Srikanth's Blog

As planned and committed, here's my 100th post. Here's why I started blogging. To work on my writing, build discipline, and gradually develop my book projects. I'm in the process of developing a daily writing practice. It's been around three months I started this blog and I think it was quite an intense experience in terms of staying committed to the goal and moving towards the target one post at a time. I enjoyed the writing process, accomplished the goal, and also generated lots of new ideas for my book projects.  Well, initially I had a plan to publish only 50 posts. However, midway I completed this goal and changed the target to 100 posts .  Here's what I learned.  You have to show up on the bad days. I have started to treat my writing as a task and not overthink in terms of my voice and outcome. Once you decouple output from outcome, things become easier. In fact I strongly feel the outcomes get better when you decouple, detach, and move on to the next idea. I ...

Questions are for prospects who are seasoned professionals. However, you can modify these questions for new entrants in the job market. In hiring, context is everything. So questions should be adapted to meet your specific business context, culture, and environment. The idea is to assess candidate's future potential, values alignment, leadership quotient, holistic personality alignment, and how they envision themselves in their future workplace. Here are 10 questions you should ask as a hiring manager. 1) What are your values? 2) What is your life's work? Unless it's personal. (Assess trajectory, potential, and alignment) 3) What is your most significant achievement so far? 4) What are the 5 things you have learnt in your career so far? Life Lessons. 5) Who are our competitors and why do you think so? 6) Why did you choose a job over entrepreneurship? 7) What's the one thing that can improve our product, service, or brand and why? 8) Apart from your work identity, who a...

The average career span in our lifetime is 30 - 35 years or so. If you spend three years in a company, it’s 10% of your life. If you spend one year, it’s 3.33% of your life. Changing jobs is a highly contextual and personal experience. I'm not advocating for anything here. The idea is to only spotlight. Time is your most precious asset. By all means, choose to work with companies that are aligned to your values, those that respect your value, and are also doing some meaningful work from a societal standpoint. Focus on building diverse skills, a learning mindset, and explore the possibility of being a multipotentialite. Smart companies and hiring managers focus on the current and future potential of a prospect. While you work for the company, ensure the company is also working for you. Think deeply and strategically about your tenure at an organization. In this VUCA world, it’s in your best interest to build your own identity. It’s a huge risk to build an identity totally based on ...

Success is a definition and it should be absolutely yours to define. Most people are swayed by the society’s themes and definition of success, and in turn they fall into the trap of constantly comparing with other people. The society’s definition is in its own interest. Like individuals, I think the society too, has a survival mechanism and there’s a demand to constantly influence individuals to work for the system, in the sole interest of its continuity. When individuals are successful, the collective is naturally successful, contributing to real societal progress. I think each and everyone should think for themselves, identify goals, define success, and accordingly measure success. Success is subjective. You should define your version. What does success mean to you? I think the quality of your sleep is a good way to measure some degree of success. If you’re able to rest well, it means the body and mind are in union and you’re working towards your goals, living well, doing your best, ...

There are best practices and then there are new practices. If we only follow best practices, how can one develop new practices? Today’s best practice was once a new practice. For whatever reason, someone had the courage or was just curious to challenge the status quo, experiment, iterate and replace an existing best practice. Or someone was naive and ignorant of the so-called rules and by sheer accident they created a new set of rules which eventually turned into a best practice that you’re following today. Well, it's safe and common sense to follow best practices in most aspect of your life. You don't want to create new practices in areas where your life depends best practices and a set of predefined rules. For example swimming, flying an aircraft, or driving a car. Only domain experts can propose new practices in this context. For everyone else, you have to follow the rulebook. There's no question about it. However this is not the case in every line of work. For example i...

Perfection is a sophisticated form of procrastination. Progress is a simple form of determination. Don’t overthink and stay paralysed, when you can accomplish your tasks, projects, goals, and dreams through consistent progress. Try, fail, explore, learn, and iterate on your work and move ahead. The more your work, the better you can think and churn out high quality work. Don't suffer from the perfection syndrome. Move ahead! If you don’t allow the mind to consistently function, it won’t reach its optimum level of output. Focus on progress, be it even as little as 0.1% of your work every day, you should do it. For example, if you want to write a book, at least start with the title, few chapter names, or start jotting down your ideas, and don’t wait for the perfect day to write and become an Author. You’ll become an author, if you work towards it and not just dream towards it. Perfection is an outcome of progress, if at all there's something called perfection in the first place. ...

This post is a chapter from my book The User Experience Consultant: 10 Reasons Why UX Designers Should Consider a Career in Consulting Chapter 3: Adventure Every day, there’s a new challenge to be solved. Consultants work with clients to solve big problems that can have a direct and positive impact on their business. It’s an adventure out there. A new domain, a new market, a new set of users, new set of processes to understand, and new things to learn with every new project. I beg to differ that product companies are more interesting and challenging for UX designers, because everything is more or less sorted — well, at least with the large product firms. Once you solve the big problem and the core product is built, where is the adventure? All else that remains is building on top of that fundamental user experience and doing patch work, day in and day out. You’re basically moving pixels, not people. Not everyone gets a chance to be in the initial development of the product. Only the fou...

AI is the best thing that has happened to the UX industry. It is helping us to focus on the really important things — the ones we should have focused on, in the first place. UX isn’t over. In fact it’s just getting started. The new AI era is a seminal event for the industry, separating the wheat from the chaff. UX is serious business and demands collaborative and multidisciplinary thinkers. The 10 important things you can and should do as a UX practitioner in the new era of AI. Here's how you still add value. 1) Facilitate design workshops to discover problems, generate ideas collaboratively and solve the right problems, early on. (Facilitating a workshop is a key skills for a UX practitioner) 2) Talk business through design. Show the value of your design in terms of real business for your stakeholders. Build the capability to talk design at three levels. The Developer level, the Product Managerial level, and the Executive level. (Levels of conversations shows your levels of thinki...

Anyone who is exploring new things, doing something different, learning a new skill, progressing and advancing into new territories, is compelled to experience an imposter syndrome. You start to feel like a fraud, self-doubt creeps in and you question yourself. This is inevitable, when you see progress in your life, because you have never seen this particular progress before. It's called progress for a reason. I think, no matter at what stage you are in building a new skill, you tend to feel like an imposter. From beginners to masters, everyone needs to embrace the imposter syndrome. This syndrome is here to stay as long as you’re challenging yourself, changing, advancing and venturing into higher levels in your work. I think there’s a high probability that anyone who hasn’t experienced an imposter syndrome is a real imposter. The syndrome itself is a good sign that you're not one. Once you set yourself on a path to mastery — at every stage, you’re stepping into a new world whe...

The fundamental problem in India is talking about work in number of days and not hours. If you look at the Americans, they talk about work only in terms of hours. I have noticed that when we are asked about work estimation or completion timelines of a specific project or task, we quote the time in days and not hours. This includes me as well. It's about time, we make a radical change in the way we look at work. We need to reason from first principles in solving our fundamental problems. The way we do business and run the economy needs a total change.  Tasks can't be estimated in days or weeks. We need to be laser focused when we estimate our work. There's immense talent and potential in India, but what's lacking is the work ethic. Most people are notorious for showing up late at meetings or appointments, and show little respect for time. Time is the ultimate currency, no matter how much talent we have at our disposal. The rapid rise of GCC investments in India is a sign...

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: script, storyboard, shoot, and edit. Pre-production is 50% of the filmmaking process.  Here's the pre-production packet. 1) The Script (locked) 2) The Storyboard 3) The Shot List 4) The Floor Plan (Staging & Blocking) 5) The Director's Notebook (Annotated) The Director's notebook acts as a shared vision for the entire cast and crew. A film is made four times: screenplay, storyboard, shoot, and edit. PS: I learnt this process of developing a pre-production packet at the New York Film Academy  while making short films in the filmmaking program.

I just don't understand the concept of celebrating a birthday. Celebrations should be reserved for something we're proud of. If at all one needs to celebrate a birthday, it should be the day you are really born in this world. The day you have achieved something significant in your life. The moment we achieve great things, we're born that day, once again. The birthday party tradition is sheer societal conditioning and economic opportunity. In fact a birthday can be the most depressing day as you're growing older, losing your limited time, and it's a frigging reminder on your face, that you're getting closer to the end. How can one celebrate such a day, with such existential angst? I think we should take the birthday as an yearly opportunity to examine our life, health, work, relationships, and goals. Who doesn't love a good party? Nothing wrong in having fun, throwing a grand party to the whole town, as long as you look within, yearn to be the man you want to...

1) Write every day. 2) The words count, not word count. 3) Don't seek permission or validation. 4) Don't hedge. 5) Don't hoard your work. 6) Progress, not perfection. 7) Write to express, not impress. 8) Discover yourself and the world will discover you. 9) Decouple output from outcome. 10) Break all rules, except for two: grammar and format.

The Unified Design System (UDS) is a new framework for a new India.  Design is the most powerful tool in the world, and designers have a great responsibility in shaping our future. So, I thought why not develop something that can create positive impact at a national scale. I have been exploring this idea of a unified design system and developing (writing) it for quite some time now. Leveraging the power-of-design and first-principles-thinking to build a design system and craft a design policy framework to accelerate India's socio-economic growth. UDS (Unified Design System): A First Principles Based Design System to Accelerate India's Socio-economic Growth

Are you combining your skills and creating something new? Explore your skills, strengths, interests, and goals in depth, and harness them by creating new combinations or combos of sorts and present them in the marketplace. First things first, you have to gain numerous skills in your given context, double down on skills that work for you and generate new ideas by combining them in creative ways. Work on your ideas that have a long shelf life. These new creative combinations aligned to your career goals, can help you grow as well as generate a positive impact on your industry and the world. Robert Greene says “The future belongs to those who learn more skills and combine them in creative ways.” Steve Jobs said “Creativity is connecting things.” Identify your unique skills and combine them to create your own unique expression, and make only what you can make. The more the skills, the better your combinations at work and life. How well are you combining your skills? Are you connecting sk...

The UX designer has two jobs: to design, and to advocate. You should evaluate a candidate on both these aspects. Design is only one side of the coin. Selling design, advocating with internal and external stakeholders on and about design is the other side. You should look for their passion for the subject and their contribution to the design community and industry. This is going over and above the job description to stand for design and advocate for the user needs in the best possible manner. A design advocate can have a tremendous impact on your team in terms of learning and the respect that they command from both internal and external stakeholders. Creating a better world is an outcome of continuous design advocacy. With constantly changing projects, UX designers work with people who have no idea of how design works, nor its importance in business. This is where the evangelist in them kicks in. This is the UX designer’s opportunity to show leadership, empathize with stakeholders, buil...

Shraddha & Saburi are two sides of the same coin. The individual is the coin, embracing and balancing both absolute faith and persistent action. Faith and Patience are the core teachings of Shirdi Sai Baba for living a humble, peaceful, respectful, and purposeful life. Have faith in the higher power and build the patience to wait as the per the supreme plan.

The framing persuasion technique is quite common in brick-and-mortar stores. Let's look at how an eCommerce giant like Amazon use this technique in business. Highlighting an EMI number is indirectly saying "this purchase will not pinch you" or "you can achieve big goals with small steps". (In this screenshot from Amazon India iOS app, the EMI pricing is given a visual precedence in terms of type and placement over the product MRP) Is this good design? Well, good design is subjective. If you ask me, it's not bad either. I don't see any dark patterns here. Some might say that such subtle design can lead to excessive consumerism. However, we're living in a capitalist world. The good side is more people can aspire for a better lifestyle with such framing. It shows them that everything is in reach, if you take small steps to buy what you want. How you frame something matters a lot in sales.  The right frame can persuade the customer to move ahead and make...

In the AI age, being a polymath is a strategic advantage. Once AGI and SGI arrive on the scene, it would be a totally different story. If polymaths are the new future norm, then we might adapt and see the rise of a new kind of intelligence, even going beyond our NI, presenting us a golden chance to uncover our hidden potential of being truly human. Eventually, AI might be a blessing in disguise for human beings who have more or less turned into machines, in the last two centuries or so. Right now AI looks like a threat, but it could open up new possibilities for mankind in the future. Time to tell!

All I see today is UX Designers talking about just Design, and that is a huge fundamental problem for the industry. The whole idea of Design is connecting the dots across multiple disciplines. To excel in UX design, practitioners should read, learn, and think beyond design. Read diverse subjects, expand your horizons, gain transferable skills, and connect the dots to see yourself and the world in a whole new light. Design by definition is multidisciplinary in its very nature. Don't box yourself and think on screens. Think ecosystems, think systems, think first principles, learn to see patterns, and think how your design can influence and shape the world around you.  UX is about moving people, not pixels.

Flow with life, time, people, things, events, and life’s plan for you. All your planning is speculative, however your reality in this moment isn’t. Just flow with the current and see where life takes you, and all along the way, do your thing and create new combinations and probabilities into the flow. The flow of life can’t be controlled, it can only be influenced in your stride. By trying to control everything, you might be actually obstructing and negatively influencing the flow. You never know! Hence wu wei is the best way and effortlessness is the only effort you need to be in tune with life. I just went with the flow and wrote this, and now, you’re reading this. Wu Wei is the Taoist philosophy of effortless action. Be like the river that goes around or every obstacle. It beautifully carves its path, navigates a long journey effortlessly, and finally merges elegantly into the destination. Effortless action is not about inaction, it's about action with grace and humility. 

The ultimate thing in life is Balance. Learning to balance anything and everything we do in life is an art and something which needs to be learned. This one thing alone can radically change your life. Our life is limited and we need to know how we spend our time and energy with utmost balance in all endeavours. Even excessive goodness can do harm at times. Learn to find balance in everything in life. That's the law of nature. The stoics call this Temperance, and in fact it's one of the four values of stoicism. Practice moderation as a way of life and work. The other three values of Stoicism are Courage, Justice, and Wisdom. Let me stop here and find some balance in my writing, as I have already a made a point. Balance is key.

Don’t be a people pleaser. I’m quite sure can’t please the entire planet. First, please yourself, and send the right message to people around you. Of course, the context matters here. Courtesy, etiquette, humility, elegance, and respect are totally different things and are highly essential to live beautifully in this world. Excessive and chronic people pleasing is disrespecting yourself and can even become your second nature. Eventually people might start expecting this behaviour from you. So this unwanted behaviour will only worsen your relationships, influence character, and shape your personality. When you stop people pleasing, you’re leveraging this opportunity to change the behaviour of the people you’re interacting by setting the right expectations and boundaries. Our words and actions have a great influence on how people behave with us.  You teach people how to behave with you by how you behave with them. First value yourself, respect yourself, and please yourself.  Ple...

You are enough. You are a means and an end in your yourself. You don’t need the approval or need to know and care about what the other 8 billion people are thinking or doing. You’re here on a purpose to live and live well. You should find some meaning in your life and do something that’s worthy of your energy, time, and life itself. Don’t seek permission, validation, help, or opinions of the collective on what to do with your life. Your life is your business. Having said that, don't be all about business.  Build an attitude that no one’s going to help you or do anything for you. Live like an animal, free of any expectations and free yourself of disappointments. Fend for yourself and live wild in the jungle called the world. This might sound like a crude and selfish idea, however taking responsibility for yourself, and being selfish is the most selfless thing you can do for the world. If everyone is selfish, automatically, we’re in a world of responsible individuals, who are working...

Are you rich? What does your mind picture, when you’re asked this question? I think for almost everyone, the first thing that comes to their mind is a measure of financial wealth, and there so-call net worth in terms of money. If you ask me this question, I would say money, too. As a society, we’re deeply programmed to picture this answer, unless we make a conscious effort to delve into this question and explore other dimensions of wealth. How rich are you?  Apart from being financially rich, one can be intellectually rich, spiritually rich, emotionally rich, knowledgeably rich, rich in terms of health, peace, beauty and so on. Richness is not always about money.  Poverty too, works in the same fashion. How poor are you? Well, I’m not saying there is no richness to being financially rich. All I’m saying is there’s much more to just being financially rich or poor as a person, family or an institution. Money can do wonders and meet our needs and wants to a great extent. No debat...

My upcoming book is a tactical guide to accelerate UX outcomes. 16 Ways to Improve Your UX: A Tactical Guide for Collaborative UX Practitioners UX is the one and only organization-wide shared responsibility. This book is about how collaborative UX practitioners lead from the forefront, identify hidden opportunities, build practical systems, and deliver measurable results.

Are product designers overwhelming users with an excessive user experience? Is AI playing a bigger role in understanding interaction behaviours?  With technology turning ubiquitous, consumer products are competing for user attention and engagement. Its imperative for product designers to reduce interaction cost by all means to increase their product engagement. Due to the sheer lack of time and abundance of choice users need simpler interactions with products. Too much information calls for alternate and experimental navigation models. To balance the overload of features, growing products are creating newer interaction and navigational models in their interfaces to automate the decision making process for users. With AI, these products are constantly learning choices and users might eventually let go of active decision making by handing over their "interaction decision" to the system. User functions driven by indecision are turning into system functions and the interfaces se...

This post is a chapter from my book The User Experience Consultant: 10 Reasons Why UX Designers Should Consider a Career in Consulting Chapter 4: Facilitation A major part of what user experience consultants do is design facilitation. UX design is not a one-man job. An entire organization works to build the user experience and not just the designer / consultant or the design team as such. In a well managed business; everyone works on a shared vision and common goal. Designers only enable that vision of user experience by being at the forefront. It’s an arrogant and rookie mistake to think that only the design team builds the user experience. To excel in our career and work outcomes, it’s imperative for us to build collaborative skills and enable a design thinking culture. Collaboration is the key to an efficient design expression at an organization level. Strategic design doesn’t happen in silos or, at your desk. Share your passion for design with other stakeholders and help them see t...

Here are 7 free chapters from my book The Art of Hiring UX Designers: A Quick Guide for Design Managers .  I included the preface for a better reading experience. Preface Chapter 1: The Clarity Equation Chapter 2: The Culture Catalyst Chapter 3: The Competency Amalgamation Chapter 4: The Design Conundrum Chapter 5: The Leadership Factor Chapter 6: The Portfolio Limitation Chapter 7: The Independent Thinker Preface Hiring and enabling exceptional talent is the single most important job of a leader. Organizational excellence is an outcome of hiring great leaders, who in turn hire exceptional people and empower them to think more, do more, and achieve more. Only excellence breeds excellence. As a hiring manager your success is directly proportional to your ability to spot and enable great talent. I have interviewed hundreds of designers and had the opportunity to closely work and learn from competent executive leaders. I have also been on the other side of the table, over the years — ...

Here are 3 free chapters from my book The User Experience Consultant: 10 Reasons Why UX Designers Should Consider a Career in Consulting .  I included the preface for context and a better reading experience.  Preface Chapter 1: Diversity Chapter 2: Adaptability Chapter 6: Multidimensionality Preface Consulting is a mindset. In this short read, I intend to share my experience and perspective on why UX designers should consider a career in consulting. If you’re reading this, I’m guessing you’re a UX designer or an aspiring UX designer. If not, this book isn’t for you. However, please feel free to read, explore, and learn a little about how user experience consulting works. So far, my career has been a journey of continuous exploration. The purpose of writing this book is to share my experience and help others. As a user experience architect, I have worked with the top consulting firms that serve global clients across domains and markets. This is an interesting and promising care...