Design

Quotes from ‘Steve Jobs – The Lost Interview’

December 7, 2017 Design Technology

Steve Jobs - The Lost InterviewThis is one of my favourite documentaries on Steve Jobs, an interview with the legend who’s at his best reliving his time at Apple, NeXT, and beyond. It’s full of anecdotes from his thought process on product design, and why Microsoft is after all…Microsoft and I thought to reproduce some of his insightful quotes. This interview was conducted by Bob Cringely in 1995, it was lost until the director of the series found a VHS copy in his garage, and released to theatres in 2012.

At a time when technology has virtually seeped into our psyche, this interview brings a tremendous insight as to how far we have come, and especially for Apple as a company as it continues to innovate.

On Becoming a Millionaire at a Young Age

“I was worth about over a million dollars when I was 23 and over $10 million when I was 24 and over $100 million when I was 25. And it wasn’t that important because I never did it for the money. I think money is a wonderful thing ’cause it enables you to do things. It enables you to invest in ideas that don’t have a short-term payback and things like that. But especially at that point in my life, it was not the most important thing. The most important thing was the company, the people, the products we were making, what we were gonna enable people to do with these products.”

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Why You Should Be Embracing ‘Inclusive Design’

December 3, 2017 Design

Today is the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, promoted by the United Nations since 1992 as an understanding of disability issues and to mobilize support for the dignity, rights, and well-being of persons with disabilities. I find this an excellent opportunity to reflect on the choices we make as designers of the modern digital revolution in embracing inclusive design for our products.

Product companies are increasingly aiming for an equitable relationship with its diversified customer segments. Designers in the ‘customer experience’ and ‘user experience’ field whose primary focus was streamlining user-interactions would have to accommodate a strategic-level thought process in incorporating a 360-degree outlook which includes a product’s physical & environmental aspects besides UI. For design professionals, therefore, the boundary between ‘industrial design’ and ‘experience design’ has blurred exponentially as customers evolve and companies remain committed to delivering business value.

As a consultant, I am involved in the framing of a viable design strategy for digital systems and applications, and it becomes imperative that I acknowledge the ambiguity of connecting the product goals with user needs and make amends in advocating a design which is inclusive for all. In more specific terms, that means integrating a systems design that reaches out to the masses by helping them achieve their objectives regardless of the physical and mental hurdles. In the words of the legendary Steve Jobs lies vital clues for designers in approaching products from the context of an ‘inclusive design’ which is engaging.

“Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. 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.”

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How the Customer Acquisition Process Is Changing in SaaS

November 1, 2017 Design

Aptrinsic’s CEO, Nick Bonfiglio writes an insightful summary of customer experience and customer acquisition in SaaS.

Beginning with how the traditional customer acquisition model has worked so far, Nick says…

Think about the correlation between downloading a whitepaper, opening an email or visiting a website and the buyer’s intention to purchase a product. Can you truly say with much certainty that these buyer activities strongly indicate an intent to purchase? No, you can’t, yet this is the criteria marketing uses to determine when it’s time to pass a lead to sales.

Owing to digital transformation, customers can now access information about the product through other channels including the web, mobile, the social media, and online customer reviews such as the likes of Amazon, which leads to self-buying journeys. The preceding practice of gathering customer information & applying the notion of having acquired a sales lead through lengthy forms has ceased to exist to exist today. Nick points out,

As a result, your prospects are no longer willing to wait and jump through lead forms to try your software. Simply put, they now expect to try a product early in a buying cycle. In other words, SaaS prospects are saying, “Don’t tell me how great your product is; let me try your product and judge for myself.” And if you don’t make that possible, prospects will turn around and sign up to try your competitor’s product instead.

He cites apps like Slack, Asana, InVision, etc. as prime examples of early customers on-boarding which do not ask prospective buyers to fill forms but they engage with them through a ‘freemium’ product model.

It is an insightful article which I believe, would be valuable to product managers and designers as they strategize on product designs. It’s also a wonderful narrative on customer acquisition which is one of the most important facets of product management today.

Source: How the Customer Acquisition Process Is Changing in SaaS: Don’t Tell Prospects About Your Product, Let Them Try It!   | OpenView Labs

Understanding The Scope of Lean UCD Methodology

October 31, 2017 Design
from Using the User-Centered Design (UCD) and Human-Centered Design (HCD) Methodologies, this is an attempt to capture the meaning and to introduce the ‘Lean UCD’ framework.

As a consultant and architect, I’m privileged to be using both the User-Centered Design UCD) or Human-Centered Design (HCD) frameworks in complex projects, and it’s natural to have pondered over the difference between the two. These frameworks have helped me set aside deep-rooted biases and bring empathy into product designs which the end-users were delighted to use. I did write about the difference between Usability vs UX some time ago, though I always wanted to present a third approach to this methodology called Lead UCD that I predominantly use in the context of reactive product design strategy, in that, I’ve to strategize upon a user-friendly product within limited time and budget and with no prior knowledge of its background is critical. The challenge would be judging user behavior patterns purely based on cynical user data.

While bringing a user-centric focus on the problems individuals & teams often consider several frameworks to reach a consensus on the design in collaboration with cross-functional leads particularly in the guidance of a UCD expert. So what would be a better framework to follow – UCD, HCD or a Lean UCD? Read on.

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3 Things I Disliked About ‘Uncharted: The Lost Legacy’

October 22, 2017 Design Technology

As of my previous writing, I’m into my third play of Uncharted: The Lost Legacy (UTLL) and I feel pretty exhausted already. On repeated play throughs I have concluded that there are several aspects about the game which I dislike, and which I believe could have been handled appropriately. Having said that I strongly believe that there’s future for Uncharted beyond Nathan Drake although I’m still perplexed about the unwarranted compulsions behind bidding the character of Nathan Drake (and perhaps Scully), a ceremonious adieu in Uncharted 4.

Eventually with UTLL I felt the gaming experience was below par with the rest of the Uncharted series but there were 3 things in particular which I disliked the most.

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