ashumanasitcanget-blog

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The Quickies

Fox Star

There are always some clients that come with a big pay and no time. Fox star is one of them.

It is a trending concept to use experience design to promote films. For example URI attempted to use conversational UI through OK Google to unravel a puzzle for film promotions. This campaign had to go off however because the film had controversial content that Google couldn’t promote.

I was given a brief for Kalank and India’s Most Wanted. The contrast between both briefs amused me. For Kalank, the client wanted only only an elaborate execution to introduce the cast.

On the other hand, for India’s Most Wanted, we were provided with a research deck and we had to dig deep into concepts. One of the concepts that interested me and I wished we went forward with, was the idea that terror is closer than you think. What we had planned, was to have the web browser detect your location and based on that lay out all possibilities of terror. For example, the users browser could show him - 200m away is a railway station where x amount of bags go unidentified every day. Are you really safe?

My role here was to create storyboards and wireframes. The execution would be taken forward by 3D animators and developers.

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The Travel

Peddar Rd - Goregaon

My whole life I’ve been taunted for for being a townie snob, and honestly I never really understood the big deal till I really did the travel.

There is no part of the travel I’d really mark off as enjoyable. Initially I told everyone that it wasn’t too bad, just so that I wouldn’t pass off as a snob. I also tried to glorify the sunlight and shadow from the window, like most people do.

On an average, 5 minutes late from home = half an hour late to office. That’s how it is with trains, because the Goregaon Slow and Borivali Slow occur in a span on 5 minutes, and being 5 minuets late means missing both. Office is in Goregaon, so no - can’t take the Bandra Slow, Virar Fast, or Andheri Slow. I learnt this the hard way by actually getting on an Andheri Slow by accident and then dismantling and re-mantling my body to the next platform to take a train till Goregaon.

I feel travel plays such a big role in the quality of work I put out. I’m often tired before I even start my day, especially now because of the heat. To add to the chaotic travel, my walk to office has not footpath, so I’m often dodging rickshaws, street hawkers, bikes and people. That’s not all, the lift in the office building stopped working so I end up climbing seven floors before I really get to my desk.

That is one and a half hours before I start. For the rest of the day I’m usually dreading the one and a half hours on my way back.

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Inclusive Design

Our off-site

We went for a 3 day offsite from the 21st to 24th March to Kamshet. We gave up our Holi break for this, but each minute was completely worth it. Each of us were asked to make presentations about topics we felt strongly about in context to Design and how we could incorporate it in our work. I spoke about inclusive design.

As the name gives away, inclusive design is a method of designing through which we aim to include as many people as possible, having different demographic and psychographic requirements.

In 2010, Xbox released Kinnect and expected a boom of profits because of their unique use of technology, by adding motion to video gaming. However, this failed in Japan, because what the designers didn’t see, was that an average Japanese house hold is rather compact and doesn’t allow enough space for the motion. Secondly, they have paper thin walls and the noise disturbed the neighbors. This came as a blow to Microsoft, after which they conducted and released a study about inclusive design, it’s importance and principles. This study was based on the idea that a designer keeps himself/herself as a benchmark while designing.

https://www.microsoft.com/design/inclusive/

While there was so much for me to learn from this study, I was happy the team was able to have a constructive discussion about the problems in our design and how we can be better.

Others spoke about gamification, typography, SEO, AB testing, Personas in UX, Designing for Mobile and Animations & Interactions.

The two days of presentations ended with definitely my favorite part, beer and karaoke. I can feel my beer belly smile as I write this.

Other than a great learning, I feel this was a great way for the team to bond and understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses better .

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In Development

Indus Action

Indus Action is an NGO that aims to educate and empower the girl child. Work the website started four months ago and we’re close to finished. We had to revamp their existing website in order to communicate better what they do.

This project brings me to talk about how important it is for a designer to know the basics of development. The other day, I asked the developer to change the header, and I had all the H1 colours changed instead of H2. This was miscommunication from my end and cost us an entire day for feedback and re-communication. Work is much faster when we, as designers are able to provide developers with correct files and articulate interactions in the correct language.

Invision created a plug-in for sketch called Craft, that makes life really easy for everyone. It performs a similar function to Zeplin, except here, I can use the same link for Client feedback, development comments and to deliver assets for development. Once I’ve sliced all elements in desired formats from sketch, I upload it to Invision using Craft and add the developer to the project. He can download all assets from the link.

After the webpage has gone into development I spend a large chunk of time making sure that the web layout is as close to the design as possible. What happened for me in this case, is that I allowed some of my captains to bleed out of the grid to make the names fit in a single line. I didn’t realize the the the container at the development stage wouldn’t allow the same. This made me end up in a lot of changes in terms of layout and font sizes.

I’m really happy to have this experience as an intern, to have control and responsibility. I’ve had so much to learn through this project, and am eager to learn more. This is my first website in development. I keep this as a base and only hope to grow from here.

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Haiyya

My experience with the webpage for Haiyya has been quite a roller coaster. Seven versions and just 2 approvals into the project, my boss changed his job and all of a sudden I was alone on it.

Haiyya is an NGO that stands for empowering change makers to bring about positive outcomes in our environment.

Through the process I learnt, the way NGOs look at content is nothing niche. They have pages and pages of information that needs to be shared and it becomes our responsibility to make each line attractive so that no information is missed.

An easy way to deal with too much content is to reveal information on hover. However, while dealing with mobile versions of the same layouts, I realised most of these interactions became redundant. I’ve been using this thought like a mantra, and have been approaching all new briefs thinking, “Mobile First.” The truth is, the world is on Mobile. Desktop just happens to be.

What we want for Indian NGOs is for them to have good-looking websites so that their messages are taken seriously and likewise donations are made. At the same time, we deal with low budget photography, and low budgets on development.

The challenge I’m dealing with right now, is to create feasible interactions with dynamic and attractive layouts having large chunks of content.

While I do see parts of the project coming together, I’m nervous and excited about how the final product will turn out.

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At least I'm more confident than I was yesterday

I say this to myself every morning

This is an illustration I made for a website to showcase 5 steps of the education programme conducted by the brand. The walk cycle of the girl shows more and more confidence with each step.

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People vs Projects

Working somewhere isn’t always entirely about the work now, is it? In my case, the work occupies only 20% of my patience. The rest of it is the background music (quite literally) interrupted by random jokes made by Alexa. 

I’ve spent a large amount of my time in the past few days working on a website for an NGO that encourages people to take on the responsibility for bringing about change in the social and ecological environments we live in. 

Currently, I’m partially involved in 3 projects, and am predominantly responsible for 2. I’m sure, it goes without saying, on a day I’ve to work on more than 2 projects at a time, my laptop decides to hang, softwares decide to crash, microphone mutes, and I embarrassingly complete a Google Hangout meeting over a normal phone call.  

I think at work, people over estimate the speed at which ideas come and underestimate how uncomfortable it is to have people constantly peeping into one’s laptop. I also feel that these expectations are relative, and not the same for everyone at work.

Of course, there are parts which are great. People are always eager to know more about me, my boss is extremely nurturing and makes sure he plans work in a way that I can eat on time and leave on time, and the best part is, I have my batchmate Mahek with me, so we have our little venting-session at the end of everyday. 

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First Day: First One

Unlike my expectations, after being greeted in college with raised eyebrows every morning for being late for a year and a half, I walked into office 10 minutes before time and happened to be the only person there. Everyone else came only an hour later. Till then the office looked exactly like the picture above.

A couple of new experiences came my way, with a whole lot of new realisations. The office is located in Goregaon and is a 4 minute walk from the station. So far, I’ve only needed to travel cab-able distances for work or college. My 45 minute train journey to and fro made me contemplate over how patiently women stood in the train despite the morning rush, and how impatiently I reacted to any minor inconvenience, like being squeezed into the train window from the seat. I mean, at least I had a seat. 

People at The Human Experience are extremely warm and friendly. Their objective is to give digital interfaces a human experience, and they definitely are great at what they do. While I am extremely excited to learn from them, as of now I’m also feeling a little nervous and under confident about my quality of work. Right now I’ve been given a branding assignment for an NGO which would extend into digital interfaces. I also learnt about a new plug in for Sketch, called Craft, which allows me to share screens with my colleagues directly from the software through a link. The team also operates entirely on Sketch, even for certain print based layouts. I’m still getting a hang of that idea.

Everyone did try to make conversation with me and seemed interested in listening to what I had to say, but being the introvert I am, I didn’t have too much to say. I hope I get to know the team better with time, and that their talkativeness rubs on to me. 

The walls have caricatures of the team members and a decal which says, “we are only human.” which is oddly inspiring. With that in mind, I look forward to a new day at work and a lot more to learn.