jitenderphogat-blog

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Course Critique

Before the start of this semester, I was really excited for this course because of its structure and content like how to come with an innovative idea and design. This course has added a lot to my knowledge and course material that was provided was very valuable and I was easily able to relate things to them and made things a lot easier to understand. And individual assignments pushed me out of the comfort zone and think independently and write it down in blogs which I had rarely done before and that helped me a lot in improving my thinking process and how to frame and express ideas. Group project was a great learning opportunity where I was able to apply all design concepts and ideas to come up with a solution.

Generative research AND Diverging and Converging: -

Generative research tool is a very effective way to know the customers or audience which is very important when it comes to innovation and designing a product. We used this tool effectively while working on project and it helped us getting to know our persona in detail. We used this tool to know every single detail that was important for us and we realized how powerful and useful this tool is. In our initial phase of our project we were gathering as much information as we can get from different people so that we have a lot of data while we start making some conclusion from it. Our approach was diversified we didn’t focus only on health aspect of our persona but all other details too that were relevant for us. And we start analyzing data and making some conclusions from them. 

This phase was very challenging because I started making some conclusions and reaching at a decision instantly so here working in a group helped me a lot to think diversely while we were trying to identify our persona’s pain points, needs and desires. This part was very crucial, and we often seek guidance from our professor whether we are on right path or not and that feedback was really helpful to us. This was the part which helped us in identifying problem statements for our persona which was finally converged into Challenge Statement which included all the key aspects of our persona and pain points and needs. Now we had a Challenge statement and we have to come up with solutions and it was again time to diverge and find every possible solution to address the problem. And once we have multiple solution, we will narrow down to one solution which will address the challenge statement.

Ideas and Prototyping: -

When we were creating solutions for our challenge statement we were noting down every single approach and idea and allowed a lot of diversified thoughts for addressing that problem. Because it is very necessary to come up with initial prototype for a solution which is then modified a number of times before we finalize a design. We followed the same strategy and we came up with 5-6 solutions for the problem. Later, after analyzing good and bad points for each solution we scraped 3 ideas completely and proceed with 3 ideas and started initial prototyping of those which didn’t take that much of time. 

Then we did peer critique to evaluate each design which helped us noting down every positive and negative aspect of our design. After evaluating, we realized that out of our 3 ideas none of them was individually addressing the problem completely. After brainstorming we decided if we can put all these three solutions together in one then we will be able to address our challenge statement completely. Then we prepared initial rough paper prototype of our E-Health mobile application.

LOW FIDELITY HIGH CONTENT

At this time our focus was more on features and functioning of app rather than look and feel. Once we were done with all the functionality then we started improving User Interface for a better experience for user. We did a lot of editing and redefining of features in our app to make it more user friendly.

I cannot find anything in this project which I would say I didn’t find useful working in a group. It was a great experience and I learned a lot from diverse thoughts from my team members. I was fortunate to have two team members from different countries one from China and one from Greece. They had different approach of thinking and it helped us a lot when we were in our diverging phase. Only thing I felt was that we didn’t have much time, so we could not spend enough time in our research using different tools which would have been useful in gathering more valuable information.

Personal Experience: -

Our persona was international students who have just moved to States and enrolled in a short length Master’s program. And in our journey in this project we were able to empathize with our persona because we were able to relate those situation and experiences of our interviewee with ours. Since my teammates were from different countries so it helped us in our diverging phase as everyone has different kind of approach but also faced difficulty in our converging phase where we had to narrow down. But overall it was a great experience working with them as a team. They were creative and full of energy every time so that made me to be at my best every time.

The professor was always our reference point whenever we were confused, he always helped us out of situation and provided a feedback which was really helpful in knowing where we went wrong where we could have done better. The best part was that he never interfered in our process that much allowed us to work and think freely and only guiding when we ask for it or when we feel we are going in wrong direction. For instance, in initial phase of project when we were struggling in deciding tools for our research then he suggested us to use a list of top and popular 20 completely companies and provide that list to interviewee and ask him to choose a company they would prefer to receive his healthcare services from. That tool was proven very useful in our research process.

Overall, this course and project was a great learning curve for me. It pushed me out of my comfort zone and think independently and express my ideas clearly to others. We didn’t have that much of time in this course, so it would have been better if we had little more time which will allow us to perform a better research and will eventually result in more knowledge. But still it was a unique experience for me.

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Data visualization - Money vs Happiness

Source: - 

https://www.cnbc.com/2015/12/14/money-can-buy-happiness-but-only-to-a-point.html

http://time.com/money/5157625/ideal-income-study/

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/17/map-happiness-benchmark_n_5592194.html

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/nation-now/2018/02/26/does-money-equal-happiness-does-until-you-earn-much/374119002/

Design tool used: - (Shared Publicly)

https://www.canva.com/design/DADARGVzVIk/ClUP46xa4-Hn7vcEhoJ4Dw/edit?category=tACFahzNhT4

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Creativity and Innovation

Creativity is process of bringing something new and imaginative into world. It is the ability to perceive the world in new ways and make connections between seemingly unrelated phenomena. It is analyzing world in a completely new way and coming with something new which will help people in improving their life. Some people think of creativity as using imagination to create new things while some people things that it is ability to see things in different way. To some it seems like a magic like how people like Bill gates, Steve jobs can imagine something which never existed before and still come up with complete new things which is now ruling the world. But, it is no magic. Then, question comes: - Is it something that comes naturally to people or Is it something that can be learned?

Image Source: - https://www.thriveglobal.com/stories/12517-ingredients-of-effective-leadership-to-foster-creativity-and-innovation-in-your-business

It is difficult to answer this question properly. Some people do have it naturally in it and are creative in their ideas while others rack their heads for new ideas, only to come empty. But it is not something that cannot be learned, but personality can make a difference. There have been many studies like that states that people who are open to new experiences and are less organized tend to be more creative. Because ideas spark from new exposers and new experiences and when we go out from our comfort zone. Monotonous routines are not taking you to new experiences and hence lack inspiration.

Personal experience with Creativity:-

In my personal experience, I believe creativity is coming out with anew idea to solve a problem, it doesn’t have to be on a large scale but can be any problem that you face in your daily life and come out with a most efficient and feasible solution for that problem with resources at your disposal. I have one moment when I was working in my company we were managing the access for all the users and associates of the client. So, whenever a new person joins the organization we had to provide the all basic access to him manually and sometimes it was many users joining on the same day and it was very time consuming process. So, during one of our meeting with my managers and client I proposed an idea of automating the whole process of providing the basic access to users who join the organization. At that time, I had no idea how to do that but it was a solution to that time consumable process and client really liked the idea and asked me proceed with that. They didn’t put any time restriction for that, and asked to make a team and work on that in background. Once we are done with automation, we will get rid of that manual work. I also received ‘The Certificate of Recognition’ for my work. Apart of that I have had many experiences with creativity and innovation where I solved my daily life problems with some unique solutions which at first seem little odd and weird but they solved my problems.

There is also one thing that I have come across many times which at first seems odd but that is creative: - JUGAAD.

source: - https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/jugaad JUGAAD: - A flexible approach to problem-solving that uses limited resources in an innovative way. ‘countries around the world are beginning to adopt jugaad in order to maximize resources’ as modifier ‘jugaad entrepreneurs’

It is an innovative way to solve a problem efficiently with limited resources. I have come across them many times and they are really innovative ways of solving a problem.

Even it was published by Harvard Business Review that JUGAAD is new growth formula for Corporate America. Source: - https://hbr.org/2010/01/jugaad-a-new-growth-formula-fo Below is another example from this post: - While the Indian government is still deliberating on how to effectively deliver electricity to the 600 million Indians who live off the grid, Harish has already sold more than 100,000 modular solar lighting systems in the remotest regions of India. His firm SELCO employs an innovative business model that relies on a cost-effective grassroots distribution network to deliver affordable electricity on a pay-as you-go basis to underserved Indian shops, households, and schools to power their everyday socio-economic activity. SELCO’s frugal just-in-time energy distribution system — as opposed to the always-on but wasteful electricity grid — brings more value to more Indians at less cost, and it is both environmentally and economically sustainable. SELCO’s business model is an outcome of the Jugaad mindset.

Here are some examples of that: -

source: - https://www.funotic.com/weird/7-jugaads-that-turned-out-to-be-great-indian-innovations/3/

Personal experience with organization: -

I worked for Infosys limited for 4 years and felt that they were very creative in their ideas. While many IT companies have offices which employees find boring and stressing sometimes, Infosys never believed in making offices but they believed in making campuses instead. Their main moto was that employees never feel bad or demotivated when they come to office. Their offices have a unique and interesting shapes and have many facilities which employees can leverage. Like, Infosys Mysore campus if you see it from top you see buildings are structured like ‘INFOSYS’ and it looks amazing.

They have huge campuses which includes many big gardens, Gymnasium, Aerobics rooms, salons, grocery store, cloth store, many sports courts like Badminton, basketball, tennis, volleyball, football and squash and they also have a swimming pool and steam and bathing rooms. All these facilities are available to employees and they can use them when they feel stressed and get relaxed. This is really a great idea to design such campuses and adds a lot of value for employee care. In my 4 years at Infosys, I never felt like bored or stressed about going to office. In fact work culture was very good and it was amazing and fun to work there.

Anyone can be creative. It is a difficult 5 step process: -

1. Prepare: - YOU HAVE TO LOSE YOURSELF IN YOUR WORK. You have to completely immerse yourself in your work and get as much information as you can get and then evaluate.

2. Incubate: - Ideas are in brain and brain passively tries to connect unrelated fields to find solution. We are so much occupied with information and our left hemisphere of brain can’t seem to solve the problem. So, its better to involve yourself in some activities like exercising. Your mind will continuously work on the problem in background.

3. Illuminate: - This is your “aha” moment. A solution emerges suddenly maybe while you are driving or taking a shower. This is something which is often referred as creativity – a solution coming out from depth of your subconscious.

4. Evaluate: - You have come out with a solution, now you have to analyze it whether it is new or not and how to implement this. You can use “Art of Critique” to find flaws in solution and choose the best solution.

5. Implement: - Implement the solution you have come out with.

There is no shortcut for this. Today we live in a very advanced world and technology has made our life so much easier and convenient, it is all because of those creative people who came out with their unique ideas and changed the world. We need more creative people who can inspire the world with their new ideas and innovation.

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Journey Map -> Trip to Kasol - Kheerganga

In December 2017, around Christmas day and New year eve my company decided to organize a trip for employees to have some fun, to enjoy holidays and celebrate New Year. So, they organized a trip to Kasol and Kheerganga - It is an amazing place located at a hill and very popular trip destination, so many employees decided to go on the trip. It was amazing place to visit and was fun to celebrate with co-employees and other groups on the trip. It is one of my most memorable trip. 

As there were many members so it was very difficult to organize a trip and manage the trip, but leads of Infosys Trek team with HR and finance team did a great job in managing the trip throughout. 

AND IT WAS A SUPER SUCCESSFUL TRIP..!!!!!

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Building Empathy – Generative Research Activity

The purpose of this activity is to get yourself familiarize with and to provide a better understanding of generative research and use interviews as a learning curve towards new designs and innovation.

Two interviews were conducted with persons from different demographic regions to find similarities and differences in their behaviors, thinking and personality traits.

Interview No. 1: -

Brief introduction: -

Based on our discussion, interviewee appeared to be more technology oriented and sorted in life. He keeps himself involved in stuffs that helps him progress in his career. And as a source of information he relies a lot on online videos and do web searches to dig out information and keeps himself updated. He uses Facebook as a socializing online source but limits it to just checking events happening in lives of his friends and family. For a healthy life, he maintains a balance between his professional work and family and also takes out time to keep himself healthy.

Interview No.2: -

Brief introduction: -

Based on our discussion, interviewee appeared as a more materialistic person focusing on personal stuffs like mobile phones, glasses, moisturizer as most important things in her life. She takes care of her health by meditating every morning, it also helps her in releasing stress and prepare her for the day. While away from home she still understands her responsibilities towards her family and takes care of them. She is a very social person and use facebook a lot to connect with friends and make new connections. She also uses whataspp as another source of communication and for sharing information among classmates. She relies a lot on web search to get any information whether it is searching for a specific place or finding a restaurant or research. She listens to music very often, it helps her to relax and concentrate better. She watches online videos for some tutorials and music. 

Summary: -

Based on both the interviews, the most interesting thing that I found in interviewee 1 is the way he is managing his life, he maintains a proper balance in his life. He takes out time for his family and also look after his health while working.

Both the interviewees had many things in common like their daily routine, things they do throughout the day. They wake up at almost same time and follows almost same routine for the day like going to classes, studying, cooking and socializing. They both rely on online web searches to search about something interesting or to find some information. Both are on same page while it comes to use of online videos whether it is for entertainment like music or study purposes like online video tutorials. Both interviewees focus on their health and exercise daily to keep themselves fit.

Both interviewees had many things different from each other. Firstly, both interviewees are from different cultural background. One is from United States and other is from India, both have different perspective about life. First emphasis more on career growth and opportunities and other focusses more on materialistic things. First interviewee uses Facebook as his main social communication tool while other uses WhatsApp as main method of communication. And while first uses Facebook to check just events and other uses Facebook as a social connection tool. First uses only web search as his main method of gathering information while other apart from web search also uses social websites and online national news media as a source of gathering information.

My Experience: -

It was my first time as an interviewer and it was a learning curve for me. I did notice a significant improvement in myself during my second interview. While interviewing, It is very important to connect with the interviewee to get the most out of the interview and encourage them to open up to gather more information. Types of questions asked also plays an important role and are crucial part of the interview. It was a great experience for me and I feel I can improve by practicing more of this kind of exercises.

It was a highly valuable experience for me and especially for learning. Both interviewees had a lot of things in common like their daily routines, their physical activities and some learning methods. But there were things when they were completely different from each other like first was more focused on career while other being more materialistic. Apart from different cultural background, their online activities also differed from each other. 

While this activity was really useful in knowing the interviewee better, but in my opinion it would have been better if questions were targeted towards something specific. In this interview, questions were open ended and interviewee had little to dig deep into himself and come up with answers. So, to come up with some new design or innovation it would be better to frame questions targeted towards that particular requirement.

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Persona - Jitender Phogat

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What is Good Design?

Answer to this question is not so simple and straight. A good design is not something that looks good. It doesn’t matter how good it’s design look if it doesn’t do something good or useful then it is not well designed. Even better if that something could not have been done before. However sometimes stylish designs are also good designs. If I talk about google logo on google search engine, how they design it on every special day like “Christmas Day”. They do a great job in expressing it in their logo and in a funny way that make us think more fondly of it. But, again it is not just logo google search engine is best in what it does, and it never disappoint us whenever we go to him to search something. Logo just adds little more beauty to it and makes people happy with his creativity. From here we can note down few things about good design: -

• Innovative: - Innovation never dies, and possibilities of innovation are, by no means, exhausted. Technology Innovation always offers new opportunities and it should be useful for people which help them by improving their life in some way

• Makes a product useful: - Customer buy a product to use it in his daily life to help him do things easily which he was not able to do. And that is why he thought this product can help him do this thing easily. So, this is expectation from customer and if a design meets those expectations from customer and makes them happy, then it is definitely a good design.

• Aesthetic: - Aesthetic means beauty, but when a product is aesthetic it is not only for its design or how well it is designed. Here, Aesthetic quality of a product is integral to its usefulness. More useful a product is to people more aesthetic it is.

• Honest: - A good design stays honest to its capabilities and do not try to manipulate people what it can do, which actually it can not do.

• Simple: - A product should be simple and user friendly. Nobody wants to sit down and spend hours in understanding a complex product how it works. A good designed product will be simple, well designed and user friendly.

• Durability: - A good design is durable and lasts for a long time. A well-designed product is useful as well as long lasting. People expects some durability from products, nobody wants to spend money very often on same product. For a better view of this discussion I want to compare two technologies which will help us understand this concept even better: -

Apple (IOS) vs Android (Samsung, One plus etc)/Nokia: -

We all use mobile phones and are familiar with latest operating systems in mobiles. But, before I start discussion on IOS and Android, I want to go little back in time before android kicks in.

In 2007, every mobile phone company were using their own OS and users had a lot of options to choose from like Nokia used Symbian OS, Blackberry used Blackberry OS and Apple launched their very first I-phone. Users had their priorities specific to OS and design and market was very balanced with every mobile phone company having fair share of customers with Nokia on top of the list.

Source - http://www.notifymdm.co.uk/index.cfm?asset_id=1376

In 2008, When Android was launched by Google and some of mobile companies saw a bright future and scope of new generation mobile phones switched to Android OS and Samsung was one of them. Other companies like Blackberry, Motorola did not move to android OS but then they did not do something innovative to come up with something to match to Android and IOS standards and customers’ needs and expectation and ultimately fell out of competition.

Nokia, however did something different they moved to Windows OS which was very popular OS when it comes to computers and laptops instead of moving to Android. But, it was not able to offer that flexibility and user-friendly experience which IOS and Android were offering.

AND THEY FAILED MISERABLY.

SO, here comes most important part of design which is EMPATHY.

Empathize with customers, realize their needs, preferences and requirements and also analyze what market was offering to customers already. Then come out with a design which matches their needs.

For example: - Apple continued with their IOS which was a better and advanced OS compared to other OS in the market before Android and also, they had fair share of customers. So, they thought of continuing with the same and made improvements in OS to match and even better the Android.

Here are some stats: -

From here duopoly between Android and IOS started.

Now, before I start comparison between these two best OS designs of last decade. Let’s see the most important cycle which helps you to come out with best design: -

This is the most effective approach to design and it has helped google to come out with Android and Apple to sustain in market.

It is hard to select between these two as they both are best in market depending on personal choice. But, I will look deep into design of these OS to select which is better is specific department (Opinions may vary!!): -

Apps: -

When it comes to apps both the platforms have all popular apps which are used most commonly among people. Statically, Total number of apps that are present in Google play store are almost 50% more than that are present there in Apple app store. However, IOS platform is preferred platform for most the developers and most of the apps comes first on IOS before they are available at google app store.

Updates: -

Updates are rolled out often by both Apple and Google to fix existing bugs that were present in their previous versions. But, In android it is up to you if you want to upgrade your OS to newer version or not. While in IOS they design their new apps according to their latest updates and if you update apps in your phone and do not update OS if often stops working. However, it is good to keep phone updated to get over bugs. And Apple has about 90% of their customers with latest OS.

Customization: -

This is something where Android totally outplay IOS. In Android you can change Home screen, change icons, in fact you can completely change User Interface with some launcher apps. While, IOS does not give you that freedom and you have to mostly stick to default OS thing.

It is crazy that you can customize your android to exactly look like IOS: -

Artificial Intelligence (Voice assistant): -

This is something which is definition of AI and future devices. It is still in its development stage, but it is a great invention. Both, Apple and google have excellent voice assistants and help you without you having to touch your mobile phones. Apple Siri is kind of a general voice assistant and helps you with some basic tasks within phone and search something on web. While, Google voice assistant is more intellectual and can give you suggestions based on your activities and can answer more complex questions. It is more smart and versatile than Siri. But it is good to have such competition that pushes you towards innovation.

Well, in last I would say they both best designs in mobile world. It is difficult to choose best from both and goes to one person’s choice. They are true example of good design. They did very hard work, empathized with customers, understanding their needs and preferences, came out with idea to meet their needs and after that they have been innovating continuously to keep up in market and are perfect example of good design.