UX India 2013 - A Neevite’s Experience

Contributed by Prabharakan Mani on 11 Nov 2013

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A great location at IIM-B, Bangalore - The UX India International Design conference, was a delight to participate in.

Presentation #1: Established multinationals to technology startups which are realizing the strategic value of User Experience in the success of their product design and innovation programs

The first speaker was Jose Coronado, a global innovation and user experience executive, strategist, international speaker and author.

 

He spoke on User Experience as a Strategic Pillar for Innovation Success. He gave a presentation on ‘Established multinationals to technology startups which are realizing the strategic value of User Experience in the success of their product design and innovation programs’.

Takeaways from the presentation

There is a wide array of industry examples and creative ideas, which can be applied within the organization, to create sustainable product innovation and transform ecosystems.

Presentation #2: Working with People to Create a Space for Design

The next speaker was Ted Kilian - Regional Director of User Experience Design at SapientNitro. He spoke on “Working with people to create a space for design”.

His presentation mainly focused on the craft of design, innovation and creative thinking. However, in the real world, it is often our relationship with our “sponsors” (clients, bosses, internal departments, etc) that makes or breaks projects.

Takeaways from the presentation

• Importance of empathy
• Context and iterative validation as ways of being more in tune with user needs in a creative innovation process.
• We can apply many of the same skills and learning from those approaches to managing clients and other stakeholders.

Presentation #3: Making Innovations Easy: Design Thinking

The next presentation was from Ganapathy Subramanian who is the Vice President of the Customer Engagement & Strategic Projects (CE & SP) team in Bangalore.

Ganapathy is also an active contributor towards building Aadhaar (the Unique Identification initiative) applications.

 

He spoke about “Making Innovations easy: Design Thinking” which caters mainly to the projects done related to financial and healthcare sectors. He spoke of products that move us, change our behavior and even our way of thinking. He also dwelt on products that are beautiful, appealing, and intuitive, that connect with us emotionally.

Takeaways from the presentation

• Products that are well engineered, well designed and that create tremendous economic value for companies.
• 90 day deadlines for projects. A metric that is simple to identify and apply, so it can be scaled up and repeated in very large ways.

Presentation #4:  Staying Lean and Agile with a Dispersed Team

The presentation was from Ray DeLaPena, Senior User Experience Consultant at Catalyst Group. He’s a visual thinker, strategist, and sense maker with a passion for helping people “get it.”

 

He spoke about “Staying Lean and Agile with a Dispersed Team”. His talk was mostly about lean UX and its myths. The talk outlined the intended benefits of dedicated, cross-functional teams working in the same place at the same time and then identified strategies to accomplish those same goals — even when there’s an ocean between teammates.

Takeaways from the presentation

• Team co-location creates the magic of shared understanding, team-wide ownership, new perspectives, and facilitates information osmosis.
• Small cross-functional teams, validating assumptions, building, and testing in a rapid iterative manner.

Presentation #5: Citizen Experience Design

Next speaker was the most engaging speaker and he was Jess McMullin, founder of the Centre for Citizen Experience.

He works with private and public sector clients to design services, strategies, and policies that make a difference in the daily lives of citizens. He spoke about “Citizen Experience Design”.

Takeaways from the presentation

• The public sector needs better design, processes, and easier to use official websites.
• Designs can help create better experiences for citizens.
• The need and opportunity for UX designers to help create better citizen experiences.
• How citizen experience fits in the Indian context.

There were more speakers from India at the conference, who spoke about their successful products in the market that practiced user experience processes, some of them being Samir Chabukswar, YUJ Designs, Lalitha Ramani, Intuit Technologies and Rajesh Kuppuswamy, Polaris Financial Technology Ltd.

Perhaps the best presenter and speaker that I felt apt for an Indian chapter of User Experience was Dr. Anbu Rathinavel, Dean of Nalanda Corporate University at Polaris Financial. He spoke “On teaching and learning UX Design”. He covered aspects of design from Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro civilization to the Tanjore Brihadeshwara temple. It was from the Indian context of design and user experiences drawing from principles in Neuroscience.

 

After the presentations from speakers, there were few product demos from “Iinnovate” participants who were mostly students from various institutions and colleges.

 

Overall, it was a great opportunity and a privilege to participate at this conference and meet fellow UX members as well.

Thanks to Neev.

 

Visit us at Neevtech.com to know more about our offerings.

Tags: Anbu Rathinavel, Bangalore, Ganapathy Subramanian, IIM-B, Jess McMullin, Jose Coronado, Lalitha Ramani, Rajesh Kuppuswamy, Ray DeLaPena, Samir Chabukswar, Ted Kilian, UX designer, UX India