The document outlines the importance of user experience (UX) in startups, emphasizing that a great user experience contributes to a strong brand. It discusses strategies for identifying and hiring design talent, establishing a design culture, and creating effective design processes tailored for startups. Key elements include understanding user needs, iterative design thinking, and how to create impactful design that aligns with business goals.

1. UX
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FIND YOUR CREW
CONQUER THE HIGH SEAS UX
NASSCOM Product Conclave
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2. Setting expectations
• This workshop is not for Experts
• It is for startup founders, engineers, product
managers, marketing, or folks of large companies looking to
improve UX
• The 3 things we will focus on
– Find the right design talent
– Set up a design culture, process, and UX strategy
– Work with designers in a group to create a conceptual design
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3. INDEX
• Great experience = great brand
• Make the right investment in design
• Design thinking starts with design culture
• Understand the context
• Creating the concept
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4. Customary Apple Quote!
―People think it's this veneer — that the designers
are handed this box and told, 'Make it look good!'
That's not what we think design is. It's not just
what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it
works‖
- Steve Jobs
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5. Great experience = great brand
Business models Cloud, Web
Profit Margins SaaS, Mobile
Lifetime value Deployment
Supply Chain Business Technology
Viability Feasibility
Branding
Design
User Advocacy
User Experience Desirability
Design Innovation
Design is layered just like
tech/business UX
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6. What do these startups have in common?
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7. Each of these startups have designers as co-
founders
For a long time, a pair of co-founders consisted of an executive
and an engineer. It worked for Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple.
Design is becoming more and more prevalent in new startups –
Square, Path, Airbnb, and more are pushing the envelope.
http://startupsthisishowdesignworks.com/
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8. Great products speak for themselves – Friction Buster
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9. Great products speak for themselves – Have Fun!
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10. Great products speak for themselves – Connect with
Emotions
Try quitting out of facebook!
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11. INDEX
• Great experience = great brand
• Make the right investment in design
• Design thinking starts with design culture
• Understand the context
• Creating the concept
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12. Key Challenges in Hiring Design Talent
• Not enough designers in India
• Skills in digital, mobile and web are limited
• Visual design, Interaction design, front-end design and user
research are highly specialized fields
• Don’t chase unicorns
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13. Design Talent Acquisition Funnel
1 2 3 4 5
Job Description Marketing Resume Portfolio Design Test
Along with an interview
Alternate channels
such as referrals
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14. 1. A Distinctive Job Description
Airbnb is revolutionizing the way the world travels. Tagged by Time Magazine as the "eBay of Space", Airbnb is a
profitable, fast-growing, online marketplace giving everyday people the ability to monetize their most valuable asset: an extra
bedroom, vacation rental, airbed, castle, boat, tree house or trailer. With a presence in over 9000 cities in 160 countries Airbnb
is backed by Sequoia Capital and Greylock and is one of their most exciting start-ups.
Airbnb's interaction designers make the complex simple and know the details aren't the details, they are the product. Do you
love to choreograph the dance of getting users from A to B? Are your instincts in touch with a higher power known as 'usability'?
Well then you get that the best interactions aren't even noticed by a user because the design gets out of their way. We seek
someone who loves getting in the weeds to smooth out exisiting interactions and invent new ones. The future of our
mom's being able to use Airbnb will depend on your work.
Online portfolio required to apply.
RESPONSIBILITIES
Work collaboratively within the product team to map user flows, paper prototype interactions, and oversee the building process
Concept interactions across mediums: web, mobile and email
Rapid prototype in Fireworks or other tool of choice
Present at weekly team meetings
REQUIREMENTS
Excellent communication skills
Excellent information visualization skills
Lo-fi & hi-fi prototyping skills
Working knowledge of Adobe CS
You've unpackaged at least one Apple product
BFA/MFA or equivalent industry experience
BONUS SKILLS
Experience designing for mobile devices
Your favorite color is in Pantone
Moleskine is your middle name UX
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15. 2. Marketing
Email Groups Events
HCIIDC – Design India Yahoo! Group USID, World Usability Day, HCI
IxDA – Interaction Design Association Conferences, dCamps
Professional Networks Design Portfolio Sites
LinkedIn, Zerply, Facebook, Twitter, Glassdoor Coroflot, Dribble, Behance, Flickr
Design School Alumni Associations Job Sites
National Institute of Design SimplyHired, Monster, Naukri, Olx, Shine,
Industrial Design Center, IITB Hasgeek
Department of Design, IITG
Design Programme, IITK
• Don’t just look for low cost freelancers for core product work. 99designs is good
for logos and banners, but much less for product UX work
• UX talent is everywhere. Don’t jump to conclusions about designers.
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16. Evaluation Parameters
Basic Hygiene
Resume Overall Fit
Ecosystem Thinking
Portfolio Iterative Design
Visual Thinking
Execution v/s Time
Design Test Team Dynamics
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17. 3. Resume
Top five things to look for in any designer resume
Total years of
experience v/s number
of products launched
Experience working
with developers and
product folks?
Did designs become
real products or are
they only concepts?
Design tools and
fundamental design
thinking are both Skills and thought
important process matter more
than pedigree
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18. Evaluation Parameters
Basic Hygiene
Resume Overall Fit
Ecosystem Thinking
Portfolio Iterative Design
Visual Thinking
Execution v/s Time
Design Test Team Dynamics
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19. 4. Portfolio
A picture is worth more than a 1000 words in a resume
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20. Evaluation Parameters
Basic Hygiene
Resume Overall Fit
Ecosystem Thinking
Portfolio Iterative Design
Visual Thinking
Execution v/s Time
Design Test Team Dynamics
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21. 4. Design Test
“Design a car-pool application”
Car-pooling is a common practice among daily DESIGN PROCESS
commuters to help reduce traffic on the roads and While the final solution you propose is
also save money and fuel. While we all wish to important, we would like to see the process
participate, it is still an ad-hoc process to you followed while arriving at the design.
participate in this practice effectively. Despite the Share a document that shows the process you
great adoption of social networks and smart went through in arriving at the solution(s) in
phones we have not seen an effective car pool terms of diagrams/sketches/notes.
application.
Describe the problems identified, the
Your mission is to solve this problem by using your workflows involved, the end user needs and
social connections and real-time updates. Design how your solution succeeds in addressing
an interactive application, which would allow users those.
to plan, schedule, and use car pool
EVALUATION CRITERIA
DELIVERABLES This small exercise is aimed at giving us an
The design work you share could be in a detailed idea about your skills in identifying UI
wireframe mode – however please do include at problems, the way you approach to solve them
least one screen illustrating the and your clarity in communication &
colors, textures, forms and type you envision - presentation skills. We are also looking for
visually representative of a live, real application. evidence of lateral thinking (beyond
obvious), creative problem solving and
Please mention all assumptions you would make in attention to details; your ability to utilize proper
terms of features, technology used, user profiles tools to create rich, meaningful, innovative and
and the tasks they are expected to perform, before inviting products/applications.
explaining the design solution
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22. Evaluation Parameters - Summary
Basic Hygiene
Resume Overall Fit
Ecosystem Thinking
Portfolio Iterative Design
Visual Thinking
Execution v/s Time
Design Test Team Dynamics
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23. INDEX
• Great experience = great brand
• Make the right investment in design
• Design thinking starts with design culture
• Understand the context
• Creating the concept
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24. What is design thinking?
Thinking like a designer can transform the way you develop
products, services, processes—and even strategy. – Tim
Brown, IDEO
Begin at the beginning
Take a human- centered approach
Try early and often
Seek outside help
Budget to the pace of innovation
Find Talent anyway you can
Design for the cycle
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25. Design is a mindset
process
• Lean design process
• UX Principles
• UX Metrics
culture
planning • Work out loud
• Trust
• Design reviews
Design
people
structure • Get right designers on boar
• Design reporting
• Their growth path and train
and structure
• Right tools and infrastructure UX
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26. Work out loud
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27. UX Principles
1. FAST
Scannable Content
Aggregated
Preload everything
Like a physical object
2. BEAUTIFUL
Content is king (UI should be as simple as possible)
More than just text
Randomness
3. SOCIAL
People, not RSS feeds
Participate easily
Inherent personalization
What’s NEXT?
Social sharing and discovery
Self-published magazines
Ads as content UX
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28. Startups and design process
The speed at which a startup can learn is its
competitive advantage and the defining
factor in its success. But startups can't rely
on the processes and infrastructure that
their established competitors use, because
those "best practices" tend to kill disruptive
innovation.
- Eric Reis, HBR Blog
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29. Minimum viable v/s minimum desirable product
Aim for a minimal desirable product
rather than a minimal viable product.
Design is the differentiator.
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30. Design process
empathy define ideate prototype test
Startups have changing goals.
The design process must be able to tolerate large
swings
in the direction of the venture
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31. Design process
empathy define ideate prototype test
Startups have a bias
towards this end!
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32. Design process
empathy define ideate prototype test
This is usually ignored Not enough user
and UX methods will qualitative feedback
REALLY help!
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33. Design process
empathy define ideate prototype test
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34. There is no real substitute for deep user research
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35. Tools to do research for digital products
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36. INDEX
• Great experience = great brand
• Make the right investment in design
• Design thinking starts with design culture
• Understand the context
• Creating the concept
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37. The Context and Concept
empathy define ideate prototype test
Context Concept
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38. To Understand the Context - Think Ecosystem
• What is the users environment
• Who are the primary users and who else do they interact
with to accomplish their goals ( people, objects )
• How will they use the product
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39. Think Ecosystem
Bulk Product Supply
Logistics
Product Delivery
Printed Receipt Customer Order
Details
Supplier
Product Offerings
Discounts
User Account
Procurement
Search Products
Payment
Discover Products
Order Products
Payment
Office Manager Manage Order
Consumer Repeats Order www.officesamaan.in
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40. Personas
• A persona is a fictitious user that you design based on
understanding the users context.
• Persona’s help you simplify your requirements.
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41. Persona: Rajan
Demographics:
Male , 24, grew up in Mangalore, now works in
Bangalore
B. Com from Manipal University, first job after
college.
Rajan is an office manager for CoolToyz, a
Bangalore company with 100 employees, in
HSR Layout. Cooltoyz is a fast rising player in
the children’s toys market. They sell toys
through a store in Koramangala and its
website.
Work context: Pain points: Needs/Wants:
A lot of Rajan’s time is spent on Rajan currently procures all Rajan needs a convenient
managing office supplies. items through middlemen who Single point solution to
Growing at nearly 5 employees usually don’t have all the items manage supplies including:
a month, he needs. They are also not
Cooltoyz needs more flexible to accommodate needs • Easy way to check key product
supplies than ever, at of small companies like availability
reasonable rates. Rajan’s job CoolToyz. Rajan wastes a lot of • Save costs for regularly ordered
has become quite time chasing different suppliers items
Challenging in managing this and doesn’t always get what he • Discover new items, and buy with
growth in demand needs confidence
• Ability to reorder with ease in the
future
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42. Scenario’s
• Scenario is a fictional story about the "daily life of" or a sequence of
events with the persona as the main character, doing a key task.
• The story should be specific of the events happening that relate to
the problems of the persona, and normally the main research
questions the design process is built upon.
• Scenarios should be such that design implications can be derived
out of it
• Scenarios are only about the User.
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43. Scenario
• “A housewife will come to our website, browse and
purchase a vacuum cleaner”
• “An HR manager will use our app to track every minute
where each job applicant is in the hiring process”
• “A teenager will use our product to make free video calls
to her sister in another country”
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44. Group Activity: Lets write one scenario for Rajan
• Write it as a story such that
– Design implications can be derived from it
– It should be about the user and not technology
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45. INDEX
• Great experience = great brand
• Make the right investment in design
• Design thinking starts with design culture
• Understand the context
• Creating the concept
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46. Create Concept
• Select the right structure ( Navigation + information
architecture and then dive into detail design
• When you have followed the other steps and have
hired a good UX designer, great detail design will
follow.
• But getting the conceptual model and structure right,
is critical
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47. Select Navigation Structure
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48. Good Navigation takes care of 80% of your design
But, Bad navigation….
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49. To sum up !
• Great experience = great brand
• Make the right investment in design
• Design thinking starts with design culture
• Understand the context
• Creating the concept
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50. “If you hold out with your vision a little bit, it’s like a cake
being put in the oven. The scene doesn’t work
immediately, you have to bake it a little bit. It’s
unfair, when you begin to create a shot, say, or a
scene, that it’s going to immediately be like those beautiful
scenes in the movies. It needs a little bit of time to
mature. It’s like taking the cake out without letting it be in
the oven for more than a minute. Like, oh no, it’s terrible.
So you have to be patient, and then slowly everyone
starts to see that the ideas are right, or make the
corrections. You have to battle the lack of confidence by
giving the scene the chance to solidify “
Francis Ford Coppola on directing and collaborating. UX
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51. Thank You !!
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