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<blockquote><h1>“The value of design lies in its ability to breathe life into the inanimate. It allows it to have a life beyond itself. A life that touches whoever comes in contact with it. It leaves a lasting impression. An impression that changes our expression for life.”</h1>Cheena Kaul Co-Founder, Intelligaia</blockquote>&nbsp;This report has collated the advice and predictions of CX leaders to throw light on what they believe the future holds for organizations in this time of evolving customer behaviors and unprecedented shifts.Look out for-increasing investment in technologies designed to improve our experiences and earn our trust.&nbsp;<a href="https://intelligaia.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/cx-trends-report-2022.pdf">Download CX Trends Report</a>&nbsp;<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:50%;"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/brand_competing_11e9ae3af0.png" alt="brand-competing.png" srcset="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_brand_competing_11e9ae3af0.png 245w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/small_brand_competing_11e9ae3af0.png 500w," sizes="100vw"></figure>&nbsp;<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">1. The coming year will see brands competing primarily on Customer Experience.</h2>Deliver exceptional experiences that anticipate and predict customer sentiment and customer value.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<figure class="image image_resized image-style-side" style="width:25%;"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/hybrid_experiences_d5b13ceaa9.png" alt="hybrid-experiences.png" srcset="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_hybrid_experiences_d5b13ceaa9.png 201w," sizes="100vw"></figure><h2 style="margin-left:0px;">2. Augment the workforce with Artificial Intelligence</h2>Include automation to enhance decision making and scale service excellence.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<figure class="image image_resized image-style-side" style="width:25%;"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/smart_products_09197b8239.png" alt="smart-products.png" srcset="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_smart_products_09197b8239.png 245w," sizes="100vw"></figure><h2 style="margin-left:0px;">3. Immersive, hybrid experiences</h2>Integration with virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) will be a core feature of the metaverse.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<figure class="image image_resized image-style-side" style="width:25%;"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/augment_ai_c620afb6d3.png" alt="augment-ai.png" srcset="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_augment_ai_c620afb6d3.png 245w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/small_augment_ai_c620afb6d3.png 500w," sizes="100vw"></figure><h2 style="margin-left:0px;">4. Smarter products and services</h2>Develop products that use data to better integrate themselves into people's lives.&nbsp;&nbsp;<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">&nbsp;</h2><figure class="image image_resized image-style-side" style="width:25%;"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/humanized_cx_1d6fd1bb36.png" alt="humanized-cx.png" srcset="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_humanized_cx_1d6fd1bb36.png 245w," sizes="100vw"></figure><h2 style="margin-left:0px;">5. Personalized &amp; Humanized CX</h2>Personalization over the next year will be the opportunities to identify and act on "micro-moments".&nbsp;<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">&nbsp;</h2><figure class="image image_resized" style="width:25%;"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/exceptional_ui_ux_454cc7e78a.png" alt="exceptional-ui-ux.png" srcset="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_exceptional_ui_ux_454cc7e78a.png 245w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/small_exceptional_ui_ux_454cc7e78a.png 500w," sizes="100vw"></figure><h2 style="margin-left:0px;">6. Exceptional UI and UX</h2>Prioritize speed, simplicity, intuitive and user friendly design aided by artificial intelligence. &nbsp;

Article

CX Trends Report: Keeping up with changing customer expectations

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Organizations that are future ready start with the end goal in mind and then consider bold moves to close the gap between business strategy and results (assumptions vs reality). Digital business requires organizations to adapt to customer demands and circumstances in real time and respond quickly to unexpected business events.To move towards this direction, organizations must be ready to translate habits of customer centricity into a new set of improved actions to get on the fast track.Best-In class organizations that exercise customer-centricity vouch for these common behaviors.&nbsp;<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:25%;"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/small_listen_continuously_3c6713ea21.png" alt="small_listen_continuously.png" srcset="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_small_listen_continuously_3c6713ea21.png 245w," sizes="100vw"></figure>&nbsp;<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">1. Listen continuously</h2>Customers provide businesses with information, both actively and passively. This information can be used to drive a successful CX. Several organizations use enterprise feedback management techniques to collect information. Surveys are sent out to customers and not much is done with the data. That's not really listening.Instead multiple forms of listening grouped under Voice of Customer (VOC) strategies must be utilized to provide a holistic view of what customers are telling and also what they are telling through their actions. We’ve seen this expand into social media listening, expand into searching to see what our customers are saying about our products and services.Are they talking about things that a product should do and is not doing? These are rather recommendations for improvements that we can pick from our customers.Listening needs to go beyond traditional surveys, beyond net promoter score survey and needs to go to a mode called observation, watching what people do with our product.&nbsp;&nbsp;<figure class="image image_resized image-style-side" style="width:25%;"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_follow_up_consistently_dc15394db5.png" alt="thumbnail_follow_up_consistently.png"></figure><h2 style="margin-left:0px;">2. Follow up consistently</h2>Organizations with VOC programs collect feedback (direct or indirect) from multiple sources, customer perceptions and experiences and across all available touchpoints.Customer relationship is about reciprocal feedback and customers will stop reaching out if they feel their feedback is not being heard. It is critical for organizations to develop a way to enable continuous, active submission of customer opinions and to ensure the feedback loop works.Provide timely and relevant insights to help drive systematic CX improvements.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<figure class="image image_resized image-style-side" style="width:13.63%;"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_proactively_anticipate_customer_needs_09ed491fbb.png" alt="thumbnail_proactively_anticipate_customer_needs.png"></figure><h2 style="margin-left:0px;">3. Proactively anticipate customer needs</h2>Being able to proactively anticipate customer needs requires organizations to dynamically explore business moments a.k.a. moments of truth as well as the inherent opportunities within the customer journey. It puts people at the center of all activity and helps customers to get what they need, when, where and how even if the customers are not sure of what they want.Create positive CX by identifying proactive actions based on situational needs.&nbsp;&nbsp;<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:25%;"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_build_customer_empathy_cd96847446.png" alt="thumbnail_build_customer_empathy.png"></figure>&nbsp;<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">4. Build customer empathy into processes &amp; policies</h2>Empathy for the customer must be built into processes and policies right from the beginning. This demands focus on deep knowledge of the customer’s problems, proactivity in customer engagement, timely response to feedback, channel convenience for the customer all while being helpful, friendly and honest. Similarly, business rules must be defined with empathy in mind and the process owner must know how to translate that into a functional specification.So how do we develop a culture of customer-centricity? This is where we need leaders to lead, have metrics that drive behavior helping customers to guide them through the outcome they want. As far as policies and processes are concerned, we should start with metrics of the employees, then we need metrics around quality as well as metrics around satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy. Leaders, managers and metrics should guide employees to this behavior and make them feel empowered to guide the customers to what they want in order to make them happy.Culture is a success factor for customer experience. It can be built through consistency and metrics over time.&nbsp;&nbsp;<figure class="image image_resized image-style-side" style="width:25%;"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_respect_customer_privacy_86b0658f2a.png" alt="thumbnail_respect_customer_privacy.png"></figure><h2 style="margin-left:0px;">5. Respect customer privacy</h2>Customer-centric organizations have a habit of respecting customer data as much as they have a habit of using it to anticipate customer needs. This means not only adhering to regulations but also treating the data in a considerate manner by providing relevant assurances and security.How to get on the path of building or maintaining a proper sense of trust? Trust, privacy and behavior go hand in hand. Trust develops through consistent behavior in terms of delivery of service or the product itself. It is important to get a true understanding of the business value and business potential of the data for generating insights and growth.Privacy involves letting the customer know what we are doing with their data, how we are managing their data, being transparent about it and giving them control of it to make them decide how much they can trust.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<figure class="image image_resized image-style-side" style="width:25%;"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_share_knowledge_1ac65da8ad.png" alt="thumbnail_share_knowledge.png"></figure><h2 style="margin-left:0px;">6. Share knowledge internally and with customers</h2>Customer-centric organizations realize that knowledge flows both ways. Knowledge generated by organizations and customers should be shared as it improves efficiency, customer satisfaction and revenue growth. Customers want information that is relevant to them. The latest technology advancement on AI makes use of a blend of virtual customer assistants (VCAs) and human help in a seamless way to deliver knowledge in context of what a customer seeks.Improved transmission of contextual knowledge to an employee or customer reduces response time, raises competency and satisfaction.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<figure class="image image_resized image-style-side" style="width:25%;"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_motivate_employees_e04648b19d.png" alt="thumbnail_motivate_employees.png"></figure><h2 style="margin-left:0px;">7. Motivate employees to stay engaged</h2>High levels of employee engagement contribute to higher levels of customer satisfaction and brand advocacy while organizations enjoy higher productivity and improved retention. Focus motivational techniques around key areas like hiring, onboarding, recognition, training methods, tools and work environment leading to empowerment.In many ways, a culture of engaged employees is the essence of a customer-centric organization.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<figure class="image image_resized image-style-side" style="width:25%;"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_systematically_improve_customer_experience_056e60447b.png" alt="thumbnail_systematically_improve_customer_experience.png"></figure><h2 style="margin-left:0px;">8. Systematically improve customer experience</h2>Establishing a compelling vision and developing a systematic approach to improvements leads to incremental increase in the maturity level of CX. To unleash its value creation power, CX organization must reach for and achieve increasing and evolving levels of CX maturity.Organizations can move from fragmented initial CX initiatives to cross cutting programs that touch every part of the business.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:25%;"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/medium_create_accountability_909e8a5864.png" alt="medium_create_accountability.png" srcset="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_medium_create_accountability_909e8a5864.png 245w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/small_medium_create_accountability_909e8a5864.png 500w," sizes="100vw"></figure><h2 style="margin-left:0px;">9. Create accountability for customer experience improvements</h2>It has been seen that responsibility for improving CX is spread across multiple departments/business units, sales, operations, marketing and planning. Coming up even with the best CX plan won't help if no one in the business is responsible for the execution. Some companies may not have the resources to designate a CX leader but that should not hinder from choosing a leader from among current managers.CX Metrics can be a part of the organization’s KPIs covering as many aspects of quality, satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy as possible to drive behavioral change.&nbsp;<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">&nbsp;</h2><h2 style="margin-left:0px;">10. Adapt to customer demands and circumstances in real time</h2>Being adaptive in real time means being situationally aware of what's going on with the customers and being able to tune the services and products in real time to help them get the outcome. Organizations must quickly react to unexpected business events, allow decision makers to immediately understand the state of business, use real time analytics to make real time decisions all while absorbing large volumes of data “on the move”.Organizations that are situationally aware using real time analytics of what the customer objective is; shaping the experience in real time are going to be the industry leaders of tomorrow.&nbsp;<figure class="image image_resized image-style-side" style="width:25%;"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/small_adapt_to_customer_demands_6d48f1c255.png" alt="small_adapt_to_customer_demands.png" srcset="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_small_adapt_to_customer_demands_6d48f1c255.png 195w," sizes="100vw"></figure>The path to becoming future ready is not necessarily linear. Applying a strategic approach to transforming the digital business through technology, processes and people is critical. This is where the customer-centric habits come into play where aspirations and capabilities need to be aligned with people/employee and customer needs.&nbsp;&nbsp;

10 Customer-Centric Habits That Drive CX Improvements

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<h4 style="margin-left:auto;">Talk Presentation At ProductCampRTP Spring Conference 2017</h4>&nbsp;Sandeep Chauhan and Rajiv Kaul, Co Founders of Intelligaia participated in the ProductCampRTP Spring Conference held in April, 2017. Marshall Brain, Founder of <a href="http://www.howstuffworks.com/">HowStuffWorks.com</a> and host of the National Geographic show "Factory Floor" was the keynote speaker who provided interesting insights into "How to turn an idea into a product".Rajiv Kaul translated the highlights of the presentation i nto interesting sketch notes that effectively conveyed the essence of the presentation. The basic idea conveyed was:<ul><li>Need to find something that resonates through word of mouth, people talking to each other, people envious to have it and so on</li><li>Think of the value proposition by finding a big pain point related to the audience and not the product. <a href="https://intelligaia.com/work/infina">Add See how we do it</a></li><li>People need to be willing to pay for it</li><li>Need to be able to scale up</li><li>Easy to reach to audience</li><li>Need to be magical in terms of monetization, comeback and growth</li><li>Test out the idea via surveys, landing page and <a href="https://intelligaia.com/minimum-viable-product-workshops">MVP</a></li></ul>&nbsp;&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/medium_successful_products_opt_1c2844fb63.png" alt="medium_successful_products_opt_.png" srcset="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_medium_successful_products_opt_1c2844fb63.png 242w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/small_medium_successful_products_opt_1c2844fb63.png 500w," sizes="100vw"></figure>&nbsp;Some must read book recommendations were made which are shown below:<ul><li><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Be-Obsessed-Average-Grant-Cardone/dp/1469095181">Be Obsessed or Be Average by Grant Cardone (recommend listening to the audio)</a></li><li><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Creative-Confidenc-Unleashing-Potential-Within/dp/0007592515/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1493105618&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=creative+confidence">Creative Confidence by Tom and David Kelley</a></li><li><a href="https://www.amazon.com/100-Startup-Reinvent-Living-Create/dp/0307951529">$100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau</a></li></ul>&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/books_opt_55e53d3905.png" alt="books-opt.png" srcset="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_books_opt_55e53d3905.png 242w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/small_books_opt_55e53d3905.png 500w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/medium_books_opt_55e53d3905.png 750w," sizes="100vw"></figure>The Conference presented a great opportunity to learn best practices in product marketing and development and build the product development community through networking in an informal "meet and greet" session. &nbsp;

How to turn an Idea into a Successful Product 

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<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">Collaborative Design - An in-demand work trend</h2>The culture of sharing, idea of teamwork and collaborative minds have emerged as effective concepts and are common among the IT industry. The CX design world is no exception. Figma is one such application providing the team members a platform to work on a project together in real-time. One of its highly popular collaborative feature is commenting where designers can give feedback right in the file making the discussion an effortless experience for the team.However, the impressive collaborative feature comes with a slight disadvantage. As the work progresses, the number of comments usually pile up and the clutter gets difficult to keep track of. This consequently clogs the way of designers impending faster management of tasks for quick turnarounds.<figure class="image"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/large_fasterdesign_bot_9d258959fb.png" alt="large_fasterdesign_bot.png" srcset="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_large_fasterdesign_bot_9d258959fb.png 245w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/small_large_fasterdesign_bot_9d258959fb.png 500w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/medium_large_fasterdesign_bot_9d258959fb.png 750w," sizes="100vw"></figure><h2 style="margin-left:0px;">Bringing more visibility and engagement to discussions</h2>Processing comments when they are scattered across the file is time-consuming. There are inherent drawbacks that affect speed and efficiency. Our design team at Intelligaia felt the need for a new development in the application, and subsequently got down to work on eliminating the blockers in the way of working.Employing agile methodology and effective project management, the team read the documents, discussed with the developers’ community and came up with a workable solution. It was established that product design iterations could speed up by developing a "Export Comments" Figma plugin to export comments into a CSV format for purposes like creating tickets (tasks) in any project management tool like Git. The time consumed in going back and forth to read and resolve the comments can be reduced to merely a few clicks! This Figma Plugin can not only simplify the way of working but is also easy to install.&nbsp;<figure class="image image-style-side"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/large_backstory_a9472e4f01.png" alt="large_backstory.png" srcset="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_large_backstory_a9472e4f01.png 154w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/small_large_backstory_a9472e4f01.png 494w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/medium_large_backstory_a9472e4f01.png 740w," sizes="100vw"></figure><h3>Backstory of the product engineering</h3>The team at Intelligaia reached out to Figma and their developers but according to the documentation provided by them for creating the plugin, there was no support for exporting the comments data through Figma Plugin. At this point, the team considered taking a different route. They were aware that plugins could work on JavaScript and TypeScript at the basic level. They also knew that there’s another section for Figma APIs where they have provided APIs for pulling the comments out of a file. They used that API and fused it with the Plugin part. In a nutshell, the team synchronised all of the things and made it cohesive and comprehensible.The product was engineered accordingly, and the minimum requirement established for pulling out any comment from a file was to provide file ID with the access token. To be precise, for every user who is using the Plugin, they have to fill in the access token once which is then saved by the Plugin. Only thing that is required from users every time is to provide the file ID to export comments from.<figure class="image"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/large_plugin_screenshots_69893d2991.png" alt="large_plugin_screenshots.png" srcset="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_large_plugin_screenshots_69893d2991.png 245w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/small_large_plugin_screenshots_69893d2991.png 500w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/medium_large_plugin_screenshots_69893d2991.png 750w," sizes="100vw"></figure><h2 style="margin-left:0px;">How is it done?</h2><ul><li>Install the <a href="https://www.figma.com/community/plugin/930702747188058634/Export-Comments">Comment Export Plugin</a> and is immediately visible in your plugins</li><li>Open it and then copy-paste the url of the file</li><li>Fill in the access token</li><li>Click on desired option (type of comments you wish to export)</li><li>Download File</li></ul>That’s it. Your comments are exported in only a few seconds!<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">The journey from useful to usable solution</h2>In the first version of the plugin, the extracted comments got exported to CSV format. This allowed the design and project management teams to view all comments at one go. Also, a complete new feature was added with the plugin that let the team members view “New” comments which did not exist previously in Figma. The information shown in the CSV file got designers to quickly view the assigned comments and work towards their resolution.The exported comments data had all the information. However, it also had heaps of raw data and unorganised details calling for copious amounts of manual work in order to extract important information. The CSV file came with a lot of unused data columns like File Key, Comment ID, Order ID, User ID, and User URL. As the exported data is directly picked from Figma API, it could best be comprehended by developers, much to the user's disadvantage. Moreover, the associated data to be selected before exporting, asks for unnecessary information not easily deciphered by the designers. This further implied extensive manual work to make it into a sound report.We created a prototype, tested it with real time users and valuable feedback was brought into consideration. Design is an iterative process. After discussions with the team members and brainstorming over the concept, the team came up with more user stories. We refocused our attention to discover who is using this functionality the most and recorded their inputs. To reduce the manual effort and overcome the pain points and to make it discernible for designers, project managers and stakeholders, we came up with another version.&nbsp;&nbsp;<figure class="image image_resized image-style-side" style="width:25%;"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/plugin_ui_fc8a896d06.svg" alt="plugin_ui.svg"></figure><h3>The new version focuses on a minimalist UI.&nbsp;</h3>Unnecessary columns are done away with, parent &amp; child comments are grouped together and statuses are shown accordingly. In brief, the chaos has been effectively removed from the scene and a more elegant outlook given to the whole set-up. You can now view your own comments or by others, those that are resolved and also new ones; all separately. While exporting the data, the designers can now decide which category of comments they wish to export. This version reduced multiple steps of the previous version into one. The new version has a very organised, user friendly interface that can easily be understood by designers, project managers and stakeholders.<figure class="image image_resized image-style-side" style="width:25%;"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/small_plugin_excel_pop_0a061cb9a1.png" alt="small_plugin_excel_pop.png" srcset="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_small_plugin_excel_pop_0a061cb9a1.png 134w," sizes="100vw"></figure><h4>Major Features</h4><ul><li>Easily export comments from Figma into an XL File</li><li>Filter Comments (All, new, my, resolved, unresolved)</li><li>Comments grouped according to dependenciesn</li><li>Sort by timestamp</li><li>Easy to use, import and understand</li></ul>&nbsp;<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:50%;"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/large_plugin_excel_c00348c1e4.png" alt="large_plugin_excel.png" srcset="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_large_plugin_excel_c00348c1e4.png 245w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/small_large_plugin_excel_c00348c1e4.png 500w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/medium_large_plugin_excel_c00348c1e4.png 750w," sizes="100vw"></figure><h2 style="margin-left:0px;">Putting Innovative Thinking into Practice: The Eureka Moment</h2>The team when faced with the problem of speeding up the design process concentrated it’s focus towards finding a way out. The motivation to identify where things can be improved combined with a creative approach to problem solving led to an innovative solution. The discussions, research and engineering, together formed the idea and to the very surprise of developers, they delivered the Proof Of Concept (POC) in mere 15 minutes. That came as a Eureka Moment! With the useful features and ease of operation, this Plugin is surely a boon for designers using Figma.&nbsp;

Faster Design Iterations: Sort, respond & resolve feedback at envious speed

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Design Sprint is one of the most effective ways to drive customer-first decision making that helps answer business questions, define product direction, build team culture and assist organizations figure out their strategy. Having worked on 50+ Sprints, we have seen it working successfully for industries, people as well as for multi experience.The pandemic crisis has accelerated the digital adoption for going virtual, so the need arises about how Design Sprints can be run smoothly (remember smoothly is a key differentiator here!) while remote. Team composition, involving stakeholders and deciding on the business challenge are central in any design sprint preparation. In a remote Design Sprint, additional preparations include setting up tools and communication channels.Remote Design Sprints can be a huge success but only if successfully translated into a format that works well remotely. How to arrive at insights that deepen customer relationships?Let's first dive into the advantages of running a remote Design Sprint.<ul><li>More flexibility as team location and availability are not an issue</li><li>More efficient, fully digital</li><li>Capturing ideas is much easier, faster with less focus on ownership</li><li>Facilitators can provide more tools to help others, monitor participant progress and coaching can be discreet</li><li>Quicker sessions and more focus to manage group dynamics better</li></ul>For organizations that are already running partial remote design sprints for conducting online research interviews with stakeholders and customers and for prototyping to online user tests, it is easy to make the jump to a fully remote Design Sprint.&nbsp;<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">3 Factors that determine better outcomes</h2><h4 style="margin-left:0px;">1. Correct preparation and onboarding</h4>Just as setting up an in-person workshop with all the necessary materials, similarly there is a need to set up the workspace, test tools and generally make sure that everyone can get started with little or no friction. Framing the workshop's purpose can make a huge difference.The onboarding phase is critical as it sets up the base for the entire collaboration allowing to understand the challenges better, diffuse any conflict and anxiety earlier and manage the expectation of the participant making the whole experience pleasant.<h4 style="margin-left:0px;">2. Right choice of tools</h4>There is a whole lot of choice of awesome tools to communicate and collaborate and there is a need to gauge the most appropriate for each situation depending on factors like accessibility and use. Make sure to take these into consideration and have alternatives as back-up.<h4 style="margin-left:0px;">3. Facilitation</h4>It is very important to have a strong facilitator for an online Design Sprint who sets the rules and pace of the workshop ensuring clarity and time for each task. Chat functions can be used to ask questions and the facilitator can read and answer them for the whole group.&nbsp;<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">Best practices/checklist for onboarding</h2>The onboarding process should be done in advance; at least a week before the sprint.<ul class="todo-list"><li><label class="todo-list__label"><input type="checkbox" disabled="disabled" checked="checked">Talk to the Decider or Product Owner to get as much information about the problem/challenge</label></li><li><label class="todo-list__label"><input type="checkbox" disabled="disabled" checked="checked">Know who the participants are as soon as possible</label></li><li><label class="todo-list__label"><input type="checkbox" disabled="disabled" checked="checked">Send an onboarding message to all participants welcoming them, introducing the team and an overview of project’s timeline</label></li><li><label class="todo-list__label"><input type="checkbox" disabled="disabled" checked="checked">Provide link to an online scheduling tool/survey for a brief interview with individual team members</label></li><li><label class="todo-list__label"><input type="checkbox" disabled="disabled" checked="checked">Use insights from interviews to populate online workspace saving time and help get started</label></li><li><label class="todo-list__label"><input type="checkbox" disabled="disabled" checked="checked">Brief the participants on the workshop and communication tools</label></li><li><label class="todo-list__label"><input type="checkbox" disabled="disabled" checked="checked">Run a quick overview of the Sprint process along with expected outcomes</label></li></ul>Get them excited to Get Started!&nbsp;<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">Raise the Curtain, It's Showtime!</h2>Here are a few tips to make the remote Design Sprint successfulUse Digital Whiteboards as Workspace: Lots of great tools are available but the important thing to consider here is that all participants should be able to see and interact with each other and contribute in real-time making collaboration tangible.Prepare the Workspace Take time to properly prepare the workspace as the entire workshop centers on the digital whiteboard. Use the insights of the interview to populate the workspace with How Might We (HMW’s), Can We’s, Goals and Map. Over time, this can be used as a template, saving a lot of work in future.Structure your workshop Create separate frames for each part of the workshop and each exercise. This gives the participants a sense of accomplishment as they gradually move from one frame to the next.Keep remote workshops shorter Lengthy screen time can be exhausting and stands a chance of losing focus.Encourage participants to switch on their webcams Makes it easy to determine the level of engagement, see if any participant is confused, lightens up the mood and is generally fun!&nbsp;<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">Facilitating Online Design Sprints</h2>Break the ice Warm ups act as ice breakers and encourage participants to explore the workspace and tools before the actual workshop begins.Start with a populated Workspace It is a lot easier for participants to add to existing information and immediately builds up rapport and trust with the team.Consolidate all chosen ideas Storyboards help map out the greater details and align everybody on the same page.Keep the energy going. You’re almost there! Once the discovery workshop is over, the team is ready to covert chosen ideas into a high-fidelity, interactive, testable prototype and share it with users. Document and summarize the results of the Sprint with clear insights and next steps.&nbsp;<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">Create stronger bonds with your team to solve problems creatively and drive innovation</h2>Remote Design Sprints work well and are as effective as regular Design Sprints. With a workspace, communication tools set up and a variety of factors taken in, get ready to step up the Sprint Game! <a href="https://intelligaia.com/minimum-viable-product-workshops">Design Sprint</a> at Intelligaia is a 1 week process to turn your idea into a clickable prototype that people can test.What challenge needs remote solving in your organization? <a href="/contact/">Let's organize your design sprint now!</a>&nbsp;

Step Up The Sprint Game For Remote Collaboration To Accelerate Innovation

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How easy we make life for our customers has a direct impact on loyalty or repeat business. User experience (UX) is the quality of an end user’s interaction with a solution to achieve the desired outcomes through an intuitive, empathetic and easy to user interface (UI) using minimal effort.&nbsp;<img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/10_principles_UX_e6784b0d44.jpeg" alt="10-principlesUX.jpeg" srcset="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_10_principles_UX_e6784b0d44.jpeg 245w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/small_10_principles_UX_e6784b0d44.jpeg 500w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/medium_10_principles_UX_e6784b0d44.jpeg 750w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/large_10_principles_UX_e6784b0d44.jpeg 1000w," sizes="100vw">

10 Principles to optimise User Experience (UX) 

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<h1 style="margin-left:auto;">Recover Your Product Development Efforts Using Our <a href="https://intelligaia.com/minimum-viable-product-workshops">Design Sprints</a></h1>&nbsp;&nbsp;<figure class="image image_resized image-style-side" style="width:25%;"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_article_1_four_phases_353a5fb3e1.jpg" alt="thumbnail_article_1_four_phases.jpg"></figure><h4>How businesses are operating</h4>The pandemic is a global event; a world-changing one. It is worth taking stock of the situations and trends that’ll govern the next few months amidst the uncertainty.Businesses are positioning themselves to rebound in the right direction. The event has forever changed the human experience, thus we need to understand its impact and respond accordingly.The goal is to quickly come up with ideas and solutions that are credible and promise justifiable optimism across all channels.&nbsp;<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">&nbsp;</h2><figure class="image"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/article_2_four_phases_38100aa09a.jpg" alt="article-2-four-phases.jpg" srcset="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_article_2_four_phases_38100aa09a.jpg 146w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/small_article_2_four_phases_38100aa09a.jpg 468w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/medium_article_2_four_phases_38100aa09a.jpg 703w," sizes="100vw"></figure><h4>&nbsp;</h4><h4>How are businesses coping with the challenges</h4>Most businesses have digitized some parts of their business; in order to protect employees and serve customers by giving digital access to services across platforms and domains. Despite the slowdown, some industries have quickly transitioned to digital such as banking, medical, education, and essential item dealers like grocery stores.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2020/05/19/microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-talks-software-in-covid-19-response/?ss=cio-network#159b66059747">Microsoft</a> has swiftly responded by developing a health bot for coronavirus screening. The bot asks questions from potential patients as a first round of screening. Workflows like these will be relevant and are here to stay.Also, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/martingiles/2020/05/08/cio-adapting-verizon-to-a-contactless-world/?ss=cio-network#73d3e1d71c96">Verizon</a> stores made significant changes using online appointment systems to keep customers safe. A notification is sent on the phone via their app as soon as a customer gets within 75 feet of a store. This guides them about the check-in process regarding waiting time and ensuring social distancing.Technology is also helping Verizon’s service technicians to troubleshoot issues. The kits are dropped outside the customer’s location and remote guidance is provided via an AR application installed on a customer’s smartphone or tablet that transmits images from its camera.&nbsp;<figure class="table"><table style="border:2px solid hsl(0, 0%, 100%);"><tbody><tr><td style="border:2px solid hsl(0, 0%, 100%);">A large percentage of people (almost 75%) using digital channels express the desire to continue to do so even when normalcy is restored.From a broader perspective, this means companies need to make sure that their digital channels are at par with or better than their competition to succeed in this new environment.</td><td style="border:2px solid hsl(120, 75%, 60%);">&nbsp;</td></tr></tbody></table></figure>&nbsp;<figure class="image image-style-side"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/services_hero_6eb8b94c5f.svg" alt="services_hero.svg"></figure> See how we implement a unified experience across different touch-points and channels&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/article_4_four_phases_14cdd555d8.png" alt="article-4-four-phases.png" srcset="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_article_4_four_phases_14cdd555d8.png 172w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/small_article_4_four_phases_14cdd555d8.png 500w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/medium_article_4_four_phases_14cdd555d8.png 750w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/large_article_4_four_phases_14cdd555d8.png 1000w," sizes="100vw"></figure><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/article_5_four_phases_4daf03d35c.jpg" alt="article-5-four-phases.jpg" srcset="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_article_5_four_phases_4daf03d35c.jpg 131w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/small_article_5_four_phases_4daf03d35c.jpg 418w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/medium_article_5_four_phases_4daf03d35c.jpg 627w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/large_article_5_four_phases_4daf03d35c.jpg 836w," sizes="100vw"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/article_6_four_phases_7b10953d95.jpg" alt="article-6-four-phases.jpg" srcset="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_article_6_four_phases_7b10953d95.jpg 141w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/small_article_6_four_phases_7b10953d95.jpg 450w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/medium_article_6_four_phases_7b10953d95.jpg 674w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/large_article_6_four_phases_7b10953d95.jpg 899w," sizes="100vw">&nbsp;<a href="https://intelligaia.com/minimum-viable-product-workshops">See Our Design Sprint</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;

4 Phases Of Recovery In The Post-Pandemic World

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<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">A World Renewed</h2>Remote work during the pandemic has presented Enterprise Architects (EA’s) and Technology Innovation leaders with new challenges. Collaborating on developing new solutions and rapid prototyping while staying attentive to costs, information security risks, and business strategy top the list.Architects have a unique understanding of the interconnectedness and dependencies in their enterprises, both vertical between strategy, operations, and execution and lateral between stages in the value stream, dependencies between capabilities, or the flow of information across the application landscape.Prior to the pandemic, EA’s could use this knowledge for digital transformation, improving business agility, streamlining operations or rolling new infrastructure to support the digital workplace. Today, EA’s can use the same knowledge to support urgent demands such as scaling up certain operations and enabling the digital workforce to get started.&nbsp;Key questions that need to be answered immediately<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/mmmiah/image/upload/v1669031641/key_points_ac6895d66b.svg" alt="key-points.svg"></figure>&nbsp;<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">Reduce and manage effects of the disruption</h2>Making sense of the future by investigating possible scenarios, businesses can be prepared to support continuity. Enterprise Architects are well-positioned to assess the impact of such scenarios and take relevant actions to build a resilient enterprise that knows how to respond.<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">&nbsp;</h2><h2 style="margin-left:0px;">Unusual times call for unusual collaboration</h2><figure class="image image_resized image-style-side" style="width:25%;"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/unusual_colab_41cbf3fa8d.png" alt="unusual-colab.png" srcset="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_unusual_colab_41cbf3fa8d.png 229w," sizes="100vw"></figure>Virtual collaboration should be enabled across the entire workforce that is now mainly remote. Many organizations made the shift overnight to set up virtual workplaces.In addition, other business processes and capabilities also have to be rapidly digitized for remote operation.<figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/mmmiah/image/upload/v1669031641/ea_expertise_bcbfa594ea.svg" alt="ea-expertise.svg"></figure>&nbsp;<figure class="image image_resized image-style-side" style="width:18.33%;"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/strategic_planning_d6540071d9.png" alt="strategic-planning.png" srcset="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_strategic_planning_d6540071d9.png 160w," sizes="100vw"></figure>Re-evaluate current and future strategic planningOrganizations need to re-prioritize their strategic investment roadmaps with scenario planning efforts led by EA’s. Take actions that are differentiating showing the new way for future growth. Leveraging tools such as maturity assessment capabilities, value stream maps can help identify management of current and future costs. Pro-actively engage and support business leaders overseeing critical initiatives<figure class="image image_resized image-style-side" style="width:17.83%;"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/pro_actively_a28c7162b8.png" alt="pro-actively.png" srcset="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_pro_actively_a28c7162b8.png 196w," sizes="100vw"></figure>EA’s can leverage the comprehensive view of the enterprise to identify common problems, troubleshoot issues and be on high alert when monitoring the health of critical systems. Offering their expertise, empathy and support can help the organization work together and succeed during this humanitarian crisis.<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">&nbsp;</h2><h2 style="margin-left:0px;">Learn how Intelligaia supports business continuity</h2>As Digital Optimization takes center stage, Intelligaia has come up with a <a href="https://intelligaia.com/4-phases-of-recovery-in-the-post-pandemic-world">4 Phase Framework to recovery</a> to establish new priorities to decide what’s essential and begin making plans to accelerate the shift and rebound to the future.Creativity is needed now more than ever. As people increasingly embrace technology and its role in their lives, there is a need for an innovative initiative and significant investments into consistent and unified <a href="https://intelligaia.com/services">customer experience across multi experiences</a> (web, mobile, voice, watch, and chatbots) to create fit for purpose apps based on touchpoint specific modalities. Together with you, we can deliver on innovation, experiment with new solutions, inspiring use cases and create a better user experience.

Leading Through The Crisis And Supporting Business Continuity With Enterprise Architects

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Color is just one of many visual cues one can use to direct someone's attention to adnd tell stories with data. Choosing a color palette for a particular data visualization is one thing. Coming up with a scalable system for applying that same color palette across a data dashboard is a larger design problem altogether.&nbsp;<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">What if we can't avoid multiple categories?</h2>Recommendations for limiting color use in graphs range from 6-9, with sometimes 12 colors still possible, depending on the type of data being represented.But what if, as in one of our cases, there are up to 17 categories in the data shown at one time, and those categories are difficult to group? In this case we are required to take a closer look at the type of data, as well as infer how we expect the user to interpret and use the data.&nbsp;<blockquote>“A leader's role is not to always have the answer, but to create the conditions for things to happen” &nbsp;Chris Waugh, Chief Design &amp; Innovation Officer Sutter Health</blockquote>&nbsp;The intent of our dashboard is to bring to the user's attention a range of opportunities for renewal business that they might not have otherwise pursued. But within that sphere of opportunities, it is our assumption that the user should pursue "bigger fish" opportunities first, rather than "small fish". We inferred the big fish to be those opportunities with larger dollar amount within a group. We went ahead to use color sequentially to express the value of an opportunity category, making big fish opportunities darker and making them progressively lighter as the value dips.&nbsp;<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">Design Solution 1 derived following the Big Fish vs Small Fish concept</h2><ul><li>Use solid colors for larger values and lighter tones for smaller values</li></ul><figure class="image"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/challenges_pic1_993da6d8db.png" alt="challenges-pic1.png" srcset="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_challenges_pic1_993da6d8db.png 242w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/small_challenges_pic1_993da6d8db.png 500w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/medium_challenges_pic1_993da6d8db.png 750w," sizes="100vw"></figure>&nbsp;We went ahead to test whether our solution met the user's needs in the best possible way. The feedback we got was it is also important for the user to see the small fish and it is easy for users to get confused as to the reason for the color being so light and insignificant. This information can be easily missed.It was time to transition to the next solution to ensure that only the best ideas are taken forward. We realized that&nbsp;<figure class="table"><table style="border:2px solid hsl(0, 0%, 100%);"><tbody><tr><td style="background-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-style:solid;padding:20px;">If data isn't understandable, it isn't actionable.</td><td style="background-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-style:solid;padding:10px;text-align:center;"><img class="image_resized" style="width:56.87%;" src="https://res.cloudinary.com/mmmiah/image/upload/v1671801467/Twitter_logo_4d0b8b6fc0.svg" alt="Twitter-logo.svg"></td></tr></tbody></table></figure>&nbsp;The team got down to find out the maximum number of categories that were required to be shown to users at one time. We created 17 colors theme of 3,6,13, and 17 which was the max number.&nbsp;<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">Design Solution 2 derived using Color Theme</h2><ul><li>Created a color palette of 3, 6, 13, and 17 colors cascading from darkest, medium to light</li><li>Colors chosen in palette are visually distinct</li></ul><figure class="image"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/challenges_pic2_08924d3fec.png" alt="challenges-pic2.png" srcset="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_challenges_pic2_08924d3fec.png 242w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/small_challenges_pic2_08924d3fec.png 500w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/medium_challenges_pic2_08924d3fec.png 750w," sizes="100vw"></figure>&nbsp;Continued testing with real time users made us realize that we even needed a 9 color chart which we later incorporated. In pie chart and also in stacked bar, the colors were not visually distinct and we realized there was scope for improvement from usability point of view.&nbsp;<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">Usability Improvements</h2><ul><li>Inserted a thin separator between each graph segment to make it easily distinct (see above image)</li></ul><h2 style="margin-left:0px;">What's Coming Up?</h2>Taking some more of our ideas forward, we will be soon running a test where we will go monochrome by showing only one color for all segments in bar charts in descending order which is the best practice. The goal is to test whether users prefer unique colors for category or an abundance of colors.We believe there is always scope for improvements and are still experimenting with the design solutions using colors. Do keep a watch to see how the results impact what comes next, as we pursue that particular design? Following them will make our dashboards more useful and impactful. See how we used this solution to create fresh revenue streams for <a href="https://intelligaia.com/work/cisco-ready">a business analytics initiative</a>.&nbsp;<blockquote>To quote Stephen Few: &nbsp;"If the information is worth displaying, it's worth displaying well".</blockquote>

Using Colors For Data Visualization With Large Categories

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<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">You enter a design studio</h2>A troupe of Post-Its—in at least four different bright, neon colors—dances up a white wall, with each square's tail gently flapping to the breeze of a ceiling fan.On another wall is a giant whiteboard filled with intricate black and cyan doodles of circles and comic-strip characters, with large words seemingly lifted from a 1960s Batman fight scene. KA-POW. KER-SPLOOSH. BUH-BAM."What is this?" You think. "How will this become my product?"Something on the whiteboard catches your eye. You move closer, letting a hint of solvent lingering from dry erase markers make its way to your olfactory receptors. It's you. A comic-strip form of you. Next to your likeness are the words you have so-passionately used to describe your new idea... Innovative. Helpful. Friendly.Panning your head further to the right, you begin to navigate a maze of doodles until you see it. There, on the next wall, are print-outs of phone and laptop screens of all sizes. Inside these screens are circles, rectangles, squares.Then you hear it in your ear. Lub-dub. Lub-dub. Lub-dub. You feel it in your chest. Lub-dub. Lub-dub. Lub-dub.Your heart. Your idea. It's beating.Meet design documentation. The heartbeat of a product—from the first spark of inspiration on a soda napkin all the way through launch... and into the future, with the product's evolution and all its iterations and features.Product design is a collaborative process between designers, clients and users. Design documentation fuels that collaboration, driving a project forward and leaving a story of product evolution in its wake. A story that includes: ideas and the user research behind them, as well as design decisions and the rationale behind them.Much like the benefits of having a healthy heart, great design documentation—when organized and clearly labeled—has wonderful benefits with its own ROI.At the start of a project,&nbsp;<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">Design documentation is an exercise for discovering a project's focus</h2>During a project's discovery phase, it is hard to understand and hash out the design problems without any documentation.Take user personas, a thinking tool for pushing the design process along that sometimes is misperceived as fanciful. And yet, collaborating on persona documents is crucial to set the design process on the right course. Personas start with real data and research, which designers often have to solicit from the client.Through the creation of personas, a product's team gets to know and understand potential users on a deep, emotional level. In turn, personas allow designers to question assumptions about a product's requirements, not from their own perspective, but from the perspective of the ones who matter, the potential users. Thus, well-created personas complement the creation of user stories, as well as their mapping and prioritization.After user stories are created, we have a clear focus on the requirements for a project, defined in terms of needs and desires. Additionally, we have a good idea of whose needs and wants need to be prioritized, thus driving the project forward.&nbsp;<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">Design documentation provides a vision for buy-in</h2>Once the initial direction is established, win project support by winning their hearts. Design documentation, focused clearly on people, is more persuasive than dry, technical documents simply listing out product specifications.During early stages of product development, you have an opportunity to use the power of design documentation to garner stakeholder support for a project's vision. One way to communicate the breadth and scope of that vision is with customer journey maps.A customer journey map will give stakeholders a clear sense of how users will use a product from beginning to end. While persona and user story documents can yield a wealth of details to last the length of a project, customer journey maps can crystallize the way that "personas" move through the "stories."To avoid the risk of making these maps seem like just a collection of steps, designers will often add other information to the journey. One possibility is to integrate information from empathy mapping into the journey. This means identifying which parts of the user's journey represent either pain points or successes.Given that most products require users to take on different roles and interact with others, many journey maps show how users' actions intersect in their journeys. These multi-user maps are sometimes organized into swimlane diagrams to clearly illustrate the system of connections required to keep a product alive in the real world.&nbsp;<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">Design documentation keeps you engaged and happy</h2>When it comes to large projects, we've all been there. The product team is in the trenches coding towards a distant launch date. This is often the time when you and your colleagues are pressing for updates.Many design teams know this is the time to bring in the documentation. And the best design teams will take the responsibility to present organized documentation with visuals that dazzle and with explanations that are easy to understand. But it's hard for clients to resist asking for a fully-visualized, glossy, close-to-final version of their product, even at early stages when the customer journey has not been fully mapped.Wireframes can go a long way to explain what the product is supposed to be. However, these wireframes need to be clearly documented, or even better, made interactive. Interactive design, while frequently documented in user stories, is often taken for granted by stakeholders in favor of full-color mock-ups. But still images cannot document the abundance of states that one single screen can transform into as users interact with the product.Wireframes can easily supplant thousand-word e-mails, while also being much more manageable to update than mock-ups. While each color mock-up can tell a thousand words, an interactive wireframe uses more action words... in fact, it tells a story, providing proof of a product vision coming to life.<figure class="table"><table style="border:2px solid hsl(0, 0%, 100%);"><tbody><tr><td style="background-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-style:solid;padding:20px;">Great design documentation clearly answers the "where did the money go" question on a UX project.</td><td style="background-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-style:solid;padding:10px;text-align:center;"><img class="image_resized" style="width:100%;" src="https://res.cloudinary.com/mmmiah/image/upload/v1671801467/Twitter_logo_4d0b8b6fc0.svg" alt="Twitter-logo.svg"></td></tr></tbody></table></figure>&nbsp;<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:75%;"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/medium_article_design_documentation_3d655d9233.png" alt="medium_article_design_documentation.png" srcset="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_medium_article_design_documentation_3d655d9233.png 245w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/small_medium_article_design_documentation_3d655d9233.png 500w," sizes="100vw"></figure>&nbsp;Additionally, many marketing departments are looking to translate project successes into <a href="https://intelligaia.com/work">case studies</a>, white papers and ebooks to demonstrate that the company is still paving the future for the industry. Contained within the documentation, user testing results and annotated wireframes is all the research for the technical writer to deliver a white paper draft.&nbsp;&nbsp;<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">Conclusion: Make designers show you the benefits of documentation</h2>Beyond being the heartbeat that keeps your project moving and improving, <a href="https://intelligaia.com/services">design documentation</a> is what you pay for in a project... And it's the responsibility of design teams to deliver. If you feel like design documentation is a lifeless add-on or supplement to a project, then your design team simply isn't using best practices.The movement towards Lean and Agile development philosophies means designers do their best to distill their documentation down to only the exercises and assets that fuel collaboration and drive a project forward.Designers should be using documentation to get your ideas integrated into the design process. During the process, they should use documentation to engage you, update you and track the story of your product's evolution.And next time you walk into a room full of neon Post-Its, you will recognize it as the kind of documentation that will <a href="https://intelligaia.com/minimum-viable-product-workshops">bring your product into the world</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;

6 Benefits To Design Documentation

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<h1 style="margin-left:!important;">4 Reasons For User Research</h1> &nbsp;<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">It's your birthday</h2>You show up to your local bakery before your party to find a three-tiered coconut cake flanked with pineapple rings and "Happy Birthday" smeared into coconut cream icing. "What do you think," the baker eagerly asks?You reluctantly look at coconut flakes—keeping a straight face—as the baker continues, "It's just perfect for your luau party, right?"Except you hate coconut.End of story, this entire cake is in the trash. Party-goers are settling for a generic, store-bought cake.When it comes to enterprise software, many companies often build their product first, and then present it to their team for testing later, much like our well-intentioned, over-eager baker.But why? Enterprise software is not a piece of cake. There are no simple, "coconut versus red velvet" decisions. There are hundreds of features and attributes to consider. And there are millions of employees who don't have the option of kindly declining software they don't like.Often, in the face of pressure for profits from executives and stakeholders, companies quickly develop software aimed at increasing output and efficiency without really understanding how every employee and customer will use the products. And often the software is trashed even before it is completed. For some companies, the rate of wasted software can be as high as 15 percent of the time. As the IEEE article,<a href="http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/why-software-fails"> Why Software Fails </a>points out, this is not a small figure: it could mean hundreds of millions of dollars and spell bankruptcy for less established ventures.Fortunately, enterprise software is less likely to be trashed or half-baked with the help of user research.Regardless of the approach to user research—whether it's ethnography, user interviews, focus groups, prototype testing, or a combination thereof— there is a common goal: to produce the insights that get a software project moving in the direction of success.Here are four reasons for user research in enterprise software.&nbsp;<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">Everyone's a chef! Assumptions get cooked up in the conference room</h2>We get it. You're busy. Quotas have to be met. And increasing output with better software is a top priority.It's tempting to go straight to the development team with a list of priorities developed alongside stakeholders during a meeting. While you all have brilliant ideas to throw into the mix, any unvalidated assumptions can become kryptonite for the project if they turn out to be incorrect. What if a baker made a walnut cake without knowing the client had a nut allergy? To say that the resulting anaphylactic shock was a bad experience would be an understatement.Fixing software problems based on incorrect assumptions is expensive and time-consuming. Developers returning to the code again—and again—to fix these problems drives up project costs and moves deadline dates further out of reach.&nbsp;<figure class="table"><table style="border:2px solid hsl(0, 0%, 100%);"><tbody><tr><td style="background-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-style:solid;padding:20px;">User research catches incorrect assumptions before they enter into the design strategy and into the code.</td><td style="background-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-style:solid;padding:10px;text-align:center;"><img class="image_resized" style="width:100%;" src="https://res.cloudinary.com/mmmiah/image/upload/v1671801467/Twitter_logo_4d0b8b6fc0.svg" alt="Twitter-logo.svg"></td></tr></tbody></table></figure>&nbsp;Talking to and observing your target audience beforehand through user research goes a long way to catching incorrect assumptions before they enter into the design strategy and into the code."But we avoid incorrect assumptions by using a design firm," you may be thinking. "They're the experts on understanding people and users."Thanks for believing in us, but at the end of the day we as designers have to be humble. Without taking the time to get to know your team and the people who will be using your products, we're just cooking up assumptions too.&nbsp;<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">Discover all the right ingredients for success from the start</h2>Much like a recipe for baking a cake, every single person has a certain formula they follow in accomplishing their workday tasks.User research yields insights into your team members' recipes for success at work, as well their stumbling blocks as they try to accomplish tasks. Identifying the ingredients that make up the workplace experience—goals, pain points, primary tasks and secondary tasks—is essential to delivering a product that is intuitive and efficient.See how we got a new product validation by implementing the product roadmap centered around effortless <a href="https://intelligaia.com/work/4r-systems">customer experience</a>.&nbsp;<figure class="table"><table style="border:2px solid hsl(0, 0%, 100%);"><tbody><tr><td style="background-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-style:solid;padding:20px;">The recipe for great enterprise UX: know all the ingredients of the workplace experience-goals, pains &amp; tasks.</td><td style="background-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-style:solid;padding:10px;text-align:center;"><img class="image_resized" style="width:100%;" src="https://res.cloudinary.com/mmmiah/image/upload/v1671801467/Twitter_logo_4d0b8b6fc0.svg" alt="Twitter-logo.svg"></td></tr></tbody></table></figure>&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/article_cake_83472f73bd.jpg" alt="article-cake.jpg" srcset="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_article_cake_83472f73bd.jpg 245w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/small_article_cake_83472f73bd.jpg 500w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/medium_article_cake_83472f73bd.jpg 750w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/large_article_cake_83472f73bd.jpg 1000w," sizes="100vw"></figure>&nbsp;And, let's face it. Your design team and developers are responsible for various line items in your software project. Discovering these essential ingredients from the start saves time and money.According to the same IEEE article, the cost of fixing a software error after a project is complete is 100 times more expensive than if it's addressed beforehand. A baker would have to present you with every cake option to even approach this kind of waste.It's not just the costs that can topple a company... Fixing errors after the fact often yields software that looks and functions like a baker's attempt at turning one type of cake into another: the Leaning Tower of Red Velvet with pineapple slices still hidden behind buttercream icing.User research yields actionable insights into the actual features that your team members need, so the developers build the right features from the start. So, there's no wasted time devoted to developing useless features like an expensive wedding topper for a birthday cake.&nbsp;<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">Good user research tells us the proportions of those ingredients we need</h2>In addition to uncovering the ingredients, good user research yields the insights needed to craft the recipe that will be perfect for users and satisfy the taste buds of even the harshest critics (and your stakeholders).User research helps us to separate the ingredients that are essential for accomplishing tasks from the ones that are helpful or just nice to have. For example, if we know 70 percent of people will spend their time eating away at the bottom layer of a three-tiered cake, and only 2 percent of those people will lick the icing, we know we need to give more prominence to designing the cake layer.Similarly, people may want expensive gold flakes on the icing. User research gives us the data to know that the flakes are a bad use of resources, since only 2 percent care about the icing anyway.&nbsp;<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">Bake the "Why" into your design and code</h2>In the early stages of our design process, we create user stories to paint a detailed picture of the people who will use your software. We look at everyone, including your stakeholders, your employees and their varying roles. Here, user research acts as the artist guiding the paintbrush to create realistic pictures of your spectrum of users, and why they use your software.When companies opt to skip the user research stage, designers are left with a superficial understanding of why their users need a product. This superficial understanding is often what leads to products that over-rely on tiny, useless features to create the appearance of "meaning." The delivered software becomes the equivalent of a baker fulfilling a request for a 50th birthday cake by drawing black balloons on a ready-made cake. Product redesigns are labeled a success with the addition of superficial UI features, even though the user flows are still no more efficient or better aligned with how employees feel as they go about their work.Understanding why everyone on your team uses the software results in design direction that not only complements the context, but is all-around meaningful.&nbsp;<figure class="table"><table style="border:2px solid hsl(0, 0%, 100%);"><tbody><tr><td style="background-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-style:solid;padding:20px;">Meaningful enterprise UX comes from understanding why each person on a team uses the software. UX design</td><td style="background-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-style:solid;padding:10px;text-align:center;"><img class="image_resized" style="width:100%;" src="https://res.cloudinary.com/mmmiah/image/upload/v1671801467/Twitter_logo_4d0b8b6fc0.svg" alt="Twitter-logo.svg"></td></tr></tbody></table></figure>&nbsp;<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">The icing on top</h2>In closing, skipping or skimping on user research can have a negative impact long-term. A luau party with a birthday cake is only a few hours for a few people. If you get a bad cake, you can move on to the next party and hope for a better cake. But imagine thousands of workers feeling stuck with the same bad cake that gets more stale with each passing day... That's what a bad experience with enterprise software feels like.It's not hard to believe that an office kitchen with cake that people actually like to eat improves workplace culture. Similarly, consistent user research can change the culture for the better. It lets employees know that you care, you listen, and that each person's success is what translates into the company's collective success.So, don't just let them eat cake. &nbsp;

enterprise-software-is-not-a-piece-of-cake

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<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">Pure honesty at work.</h2> For many of us, this is a scary thought. One that conjures up images of work performance evaluations escalating to shouting matches and HR nightmares.This fear is not entirely unfounded either. In our careers, we've all likely seen a well-intentioned "let's be honest" discussion go off course and turn a little ugly.&nbsp;So when it comes to evaluating the performance of an organization's process or software, it's no surprise managers want the task completed as if they're ripping off a Band-Aid: very quickly and without opening wounds. Often times this means glossing over deep discussions with the employees who rely on these very processes and software day in, and day out.But let's slow down.Why do managers want to skip an opportunity to better understand a problem their team members face? In our experience, it's because managers are concerned that employees will use the time for user interviews to complain about the process, the managers or the work itself.The honest truth is that user interviews, when well-planned and executed, yield valuable insights that help UX designers discover solutions—all without the negative talk or gossip to make better CX decisions through <a href="https://intelligaia.com/services">user interviews</a>. &nbsp;<figure class="table"><table style="border:2px solid hsl(0, 0%, 100%);"><tbody><tr><td style="background-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-style:solid;padding:20px;">Well-planned user interviews yield insights that help UX designers discover solutions.</td><td style="background-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-style:solid;padding:10px;text-align:center;"><img class="image_resized" style="width:100%;" src="https://res.cloudinary.com/mmmiah/image/upload/v1671801467/Twitter_logo_4d0b8b6fc0.svg" alt="Twitter-logo.svg"></td></tr></tbody></table></figure>&nbsp;When it comes to conducting user interviews, an experienced and savvy UX researcher knows how to coax out the most valuable feedback on employees' work and software experiences. They'll dismiss any information that does not pertain to actual work processes or project goals, and they're even savvy at deviating away from a conversation that has gone from facts to attacks.So how can you be rest assured that your user interviews are gathering valuable feedback and eliminating the gossip? Here are our four tips:&nbsp;&nbsp;<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">1. Ask your researcher to provide you with a plan</h2>A good UX researcher will always prepare a plan before conducting any interviews. This plan lays out the goals of their research and interviews, including a survey of questions to ask users.A user interview without a plan is like going to a new country without a map. You can of course travel without a map, but it will likely take more time and some unwanted diversions to get to your destination.&nbsp;&nbsp;<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">2. Review and discuss the survey before user interviews.</h2>An excellent researcher is always willing to provide and discuss the survey with stakeholders. If there are any questions that seem inadequate, talk to the researcher to understand their intention and goals behind a question. After a discussion, decide whether to modify or remove the question from the survey.When reviewing the survey, make sure the questions are worded to elicit answers specific to the work process and software. For example, "Amy, what do you struggle with at work the most?" is ambiguous compared to "Amy, what do you struggle with the most when using Excel to calculate the number of parts?" The former allows Amy to discuss any aspect of work, while the latter invites her to share specific opportunities to make her happier and more productive.&nbsp;<figure class="table"><table style="border:2px solid hsl(0, 0%, 100%);"><tbody><tr><td style="background-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-style:solid;padding:20px;">Users share ways to make them happier and more productive when they're asked the (right) specific questions.</td><td style="background-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-style:solid;padding:10px;text-align:center;"><img class="image_resized" style="width:100%;" src="https://res.cloudinary.com/mmmiah/image/upload/v1671801467/Twitter_logo_4d0b8b6fc0.svg" alt="Twitter-logo.svg"></td></tr></tbody></table></figure><h2 style="margin-left:0px;">3. Listen to a random voice recording or video from the user interview.</h2>If you want to know that employee discussions are focused on valuable feedback, simply review the interviews. Your researcher will be happy to provide you with a session recording or notes. With user research projects such as this, those recordings and interviews should be available to stakeholders.User interviews should be transparent while honoring the interviewee's anonymity as much as possible. In projects with a large number of interviewees, your researcher can simply present research notes and recordings with an alias to accomplish this. If your research has a small number of interviews, then the delivery method of the research should ideally be balanced to optimize the degree of anonymity that can be extended to your team.&nbsp;&nbsp;<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">4. Keep the interviews confidential.</h2>Confidentiality should be the number one priority of any UX researcher. Any information collected during the research phase can be presented to the stakeholder as a research report. Its purpose is intended to help designers create the best software experiences for your team. You decide if the findings are made public or shared internally with the rest of the team.&nbsp;&nbsp;<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">Honest feedback from a researcher</h2>There is so much to uncover when it comes to assessing a user's experience with a product, and it often comes with tight timelines and budgets. Getting any other information that is not relevant to the project makes for extra work on our end. So trust us, when it comes to collecting user feedback, we want to stick to a plan and get straight to the point.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

How To Have Great User Interviews Without Gossip

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Do we need to shift from the way we are telling stories? As viewership moves online, people's behaviors, preferences, and attitudes towards video are rapidly changing. The challenge is to create content that's shareable, that builds personal connections and that makes viewers want to tune in. Today, our mobile devices have become our constant companions. So what does this powerful connection mean for creatives and the stories we tell? The aim has been to bring data to the art of storytelling. The small screen can be a challenging canvas for big stories. This is a creative opportunity. We shouldn't just stuff our stories into smaller frames; we can make new frames altogether.Studies show that brand awareness is significantly higher on mobile than it is on desktop. Consumers are almost twice more likely to share videos on smartphones relating to their product or service findings. Maybe mobile viewers are more focused on it and thus remember the brand better. Context matters. Humor is the key. It's about creating content that is entertaining and worthy of viewers time and attention. The videos don't need to be shorter, quicker, and snackable; they can be longer, richer, and perhaps even a bit queer.The question is what kind of videos will make consumers want to tune in? Should storytelling change for different age groups? Findings showed that there's still a place for stories that grab and hold people's attention, no matter what the age of the viewer. The craft of well-framed, well-paced, beautifully created motion work still has tremendous power. As we shift to a mobile-dominated media age, we may need a new mix of awe and intimacy to move consumers, and experimentation can help us get there.Do we have a definitive guide for creating compelling creative? Not now. But what we do know is that there's a lot of value in <a href="https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/articles/experiment-lessons-digital-video-advertising.html?utm_source=2016-07-think-content-alert-usa&amp;utm_medium=email-d&amp;utm_campaign=20160701-video-alert-OT-CR-DV&amp;utm_content=Video-read-more&amp;mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTTJFNU9HVmpaR0ZqTUdNMyIsInQiOiJ5Q093cGFONHlJbWNXdUY4UG9FZ1BtSzN1VHJROVowNTRcLzNZTkVXZURWNnFjOEdGd1hvOUFLOVA0NWtUMVZicjdMcGh0OGNEU1RsbytLMXVnc2ZFUFpVVXdEYkE2YkcxOEFiTEZNOElkK1U9In0%3D.">experimenting that eventually leads to innovation.</a> Experimenting drives new ways of thinking by asking bigger and deeper questions about formats, platforms, and audiences. Asking questions leads to richer data and more meaningful insights. The task is to start with the universal truth and get experimenting. Companies that adopt a mindset of continual experimentation and evolution are the ones that will see the best success from their work.Taking hints from the research and findings has helped us greatly in making successful videos. Prime focus is on creating personal experience and personal connections with customers. "How it works" and "How it's used" videos help customers quickly predict the experience of ownership and thus have higher viewership.&nbsp;<figure class="table"><table style="border:2px solid hsl(0, 0%, 100%);"><tbody><tr><td style="background-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-style:solid;padding:20px;">It's important to tell a brand story before encouraging people to take an action like subscribe or buy a product or service.</td><td style="background-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-style:solid;padding:10px;text-align:center;"><img class="image_resized" style="width:100%;" src="https://res.cloudinary.com/mmmiah/image/upload/v1671801467/Twitter_logo_4d0b8b6fc0.svg" alt="Twitter-logo.svg"></td></tr></tbody></table></figure>&nbsp;Study reveals that sequencing ads starting from awareness to consideration to conversion engage consumers more effectively as opposed to sustained call-to-action (CTA) messages. The practice of sequencing ads on a personalized level increases overall view-throughs by 87% and subscriptions by 56%.The motion graphics team in Intelligaia has been creating videos that help our customers sell products and services online or offline. Very recently, our team worked on creating eight promotional videos for Cisco to be demonstrated at GSX in Las Vegas showcasing more than just the product/technology which was very well received. It talked about the problem, the solution, the experience, and the larger vision of what we're trying to build. The genre also stood out from traditional, serious, technical, non-visual marketing communications for new IT infrastructure products.&nbsp;<h1 style="margin-left:0px;">Our videos have helped clients demonstrate:</h1>&nbsp;<ul><li>How their product or service can solve a problem or fulfill a need</li><li>How a very complex system works through animated sequences and diagrams</li><li>How a product is interactive with its customers</li><li>Showcase a product or facility that has not yet been built</li><li>Pinpoint scenarios that can be resolved through the use of their product or service</li></ul>&nbsp;Videos are potentially the most effective way of demonstrating a product and its benefits to your visitors. Video allows you to engage an audience and possibly strike an emotional chord and subconsciously tell customers how they should feel about a product by telling a story. Video, despite being so prevalent on the internet, is still a very under-utilized component of most ecommerce businesses. Video strategy can differ widely, in terms of both cost and complexity. In the end, you need to determine how video can add value to your customers' experience and decide on your approach.You can count us in as part of your network, and we'll be rooting for your stories to come alive!Adapted from <a href="https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/">ThinkwithGoogle</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

Video Storytelling As A Versatile Sales Medium

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<blockquote>Flow with whatever may happen, and let your mind be free:Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing.This is the ultimate."&nbsp;-Zhuangzi</blockquote>&nbsp;As a UX designer, it is my job to design digital products that move people into a state of flow, where they can efficiently accomplish their goals and experience happiness at the same time.Although I spend a lot of my time immersed in the digital world, I often find myself experiencing flow with the more old-fashioned technology of ink and paper. Having trained as an artist, it was through my formative experiences with all kinds of media that I understood the combination of exhilaration and fulfilment possible with a state of flow.At some point in my design career, I asked myself "How can I bring flow into my work?"According to <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow?language=en">Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi</a>, the psychologist who pioneered the concept of flow, most people experience this state of intense focus and happiness when they are doing something they love. For me, that love is sketching. And I use that love to fuel the development of the flow-inducing products we create.Flow is a state of mind or state of experience that we feel when we are totally involved in what we are doing. -Mihaly CsikszentmihalyiFor me, all it takes is the initial effort of putting the pen to paper, and as the ink itself begins to flow, so does my mind shortly thereafter. As visuals emerge, so does happiness. It might sound like a paradox, but lost in this happiness, I find my way to accomplish my goals.&nbsp;<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">How I move towards flow</h2>Throughout many years of sketching, I have found there are moments and environments that are more conducive to flow. But we can't always control what is around us. What we can focus on is how we prepare ourselves. I invite you to sketch along as you continue reading this article, because ultimately it is up to you to find your path. Here are the guidelines that help me:Set an intention.Before the pencil touches the paper, it's important to define what you hope to achieve from sketching. When this feels tricky, I often start by finishing this sentence: "At the end of my sketching experience, I would like to have a sketch that shows BLANK."For user experience designers, a goal might be to depict the wants and needs of target users. Perhaps you want to sketch what the value proposition of a product is according to the stakeholders, and then how a spectrum of users would react to it. Or you might want to get more concrete from the start, sketching a series of screens for a new user interface, imagining the journey for the user.Another tip: I also tend to write down my goal somewhere on the page.Be brave.I encourage you not only to make the goal "achievable, " but to find the right amount of challenge, so your brain can really engage with the task. For some, the challenge might be the task of sketching itself.The key to finding flow is finding the right amount of challenge. If the goal you're hoping to accomplish with your sketch is too difficult, you are likely to become overwhelmed and anxious while sketching. These negative emotions make it difficult to achieve a flow state. Before you start, let go of your doubts. Once you begin, let go of judgment.Shut out all distractions.One of the most important aspects of the flow state is complete immersion in the activity you're performing. Like a winding river's ceaseless flow downstream to the ocean, the person's attention in flow state is uninterrupted on its path to accomplishing a goal.To achieve this complete focus sometimes the hardest part is simply starting. I often find it helps to close the inbox and silence the phone, so that I can avoid these tempting distractions during the time between when sketching begins and flow ignites.Gather your tools.With all of this in mind, do you have what you need at hand? It can take anywhere between 5 and 20 minutes to achieve flow, so you don't want to be scrambling for any materials once you have started. Find a favorite pen or pencil and a clean sheet of paper. Perhaps you have a special notebook and like to draw with markers. Or you have become adept at digital sketching on your tablet. Whatever it is you need, have it at the ready.And then, I'm ready to begin. Sometimes, you might not know exactly where to begin, and that's ok. My advice is to simply start doodling with the goal of visually representing the state of flow. For me, that looks like flowing water.&nbsp;<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">Sketching in flow</h2>Once I begin to get my hand moving, I then begin to shift my thoughts to the ideas around my goal. In this case, my goal is to create a set of screens for a parking payment app.In the first screen, I envision a message that explains the app's value proposition: allowing a person to pay for parking with their desired payment method, such as a credit card, without having to engage with a parking meter.As I continue, my state of flow actually transports me into the place of the target user, and my mind echoes some of the thoughts expressed by the people I've surveyed:I've just spent time circling a 4-block radius downtown, then I did a medal-worthy parallel-parking job with my SUV, and now I need to figure out how to pay for parking. I can't find change in my pocket!!! Now I'll really be late for my appointment at the bank... But wait! There's this new app I had downloaded just for this occasion.Now fully immersed in this scenario, I can clearly see my biggest challenge: understanding how the app works while contemplating how long I will be around the neighborhood, so that I can translate that time into how much I should pay for parking.How long will I wait in line in the bank? How many groceries do I need to then pick up? How long should that take? Altogether, I think I may need two hours...Experiencing these moments in my mind, I realize people are juggling plenty of thoughts as they pay for parking. I continue sketching, knowing that choosing a payment method for parking should feel like a simple, easy decision.&nbsp; &nbsp;<figure class="image image_resized image-style-side" style="width:25%;"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/parking_app1_070720b73b.png" alt="parking-app1.png" srcset="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_parking_app1_070720b73b.png 88w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/small_parking_app1_070720b73b.png 281w," sizes="100vw"></figure>After I select and approve my parking payment, I imagine an animated message letting me know that my credit card payment is being processed. Still in this state of flow, I sketch this screen.And of course, once my parking fee is processed, I will want a confirmation that my payment was received. So, I sketch this screen as well.Once complete, I feel satisfied. I accomplished my goals and enjoyed the experience of sketching with the user as my compass. I have a visualization of the screens for this parking meter app that are now ready to share with stakeholders for feedback.&nbsp;&nbsp;In this example, flow allowed me to separate myself from years of parking frustrations. Negative emotions from searching every cranny of the car for just another quarter to feed the meter or from discovering a paper ticket on the windshield after underestimating the scope of the weekly grocery shop are nowhere in my mind.In flow, separated from a lifetime of experience with parking meters, I felt free to pursue an idea in my sketch: What if we humanized the parking meter? Paying for parking would be less painful if the meter was friendly. Hence, a smile made its way onto the parking meter in the sketch for the final screen.&nbsp;&nbsp;<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">Learning from flow</h2><figure class="image image_resized image-style-side" style="width:25%;"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/parking_app2_e7167379ce.png" alt="parking-app2.png" srcset="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_parking_app2_e7167379ce.png 87w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/small_parking_app2_e7167379ce.png 280w," sizes="100vw"></figure> &nbsp;<figure class="table"><table style="border:2px solid hsl(0, 0%, 100%);"><tbody><tr><td style="background-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-style:solid;padding:20px;">Flow quiets the self-doubt that leads designers to question their vision for products.</td><td style="background-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-style:solid;padding:10px;text-align:center;"><img class="image_resized" style="width:100%;" src="https://res.cloudinary.com/mmmiah/image/upload/v1671801467/Twitter_logo_4d0b8b6fc0.svg" alt="Twitter-logo.svg"></td></tr></tbody></table></figure>&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/sketching_meeting_pic_a260c060d7.jpg" alt="sketching-meeting-pic.jpg" srcset="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_sketching_meeting_pic_a260c060d7.jpg 167w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/small_sketching_meeting_pic_a260c060d7.jpg 500w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/medium_sketching_meeting_pic_a260c060d7.jpg 750w," sizes="100vw"></figure>&nbsp;Over years of sketching, I've learned that flow is an excellent state for coaxing out the most creative ideas. I believe flow quiets the self-doubt that leads designers to question their vision for products.In the recently published book from the Google Ventures team, <a href="http://www.thesprintbook.com/">Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in just Five Days,</a> the authors highlight sketching as a crucial part of their design process. They share stories of stakeholders being skeptical of their artistic abilities, and show examples of how even the roughest sketch can have a large impact on a product. Interestingly, they propose that people in a team sketch individually for a while before bringing their ideas to the table. In fact, in their plan, sketching happens on a Tuesday, and those sketches don't get critiqued until the following day. I believe that part of their motivation is to create an environment conducive to flow.For me, flow is a creative experience with complete absence of judgement and negative thoughts. At the end of the experience, my sketches reflect a vision unrestricted by social expectations or stale thinking about a product's limitations, and provide a sense of satisfaction in my work. See <a href="https://intelligaia.com/work/ccw">abstract ideas</a> successfully transition into a coherent product experience.Most importantly, it's the act of sketching, not the medium that fuels flow. Whether you choose to use pencil, paper, an iPad or a whiteboard, it doesn't matter. Just sketch.&nbsp;<figure class="table"><table style="border:2px solid hsl(0, 0%, 100%);"><tbody><tr><td style="background-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-style:solid;padding:20px;">Just sketch. It's the act of sketching, not the medium that fuels flow and creative ideas.</td><td style="background-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-style:solid;padding:10px;text-align:center;"><img class="image_resized" style="width:100%;" src="https://res.cloudinary.com/mmmiah/image/upload/v1671801467/Twitter_logo_4d0b8b6fc0.svg" alt="Twitter-logo.svg"></td></tr></tbody></table></figure>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

Here We Flow! Sketching Secrets To Unlock Creative Ideas

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<blockquote>Le Corbusier once said "I prefer drawing to talking. Drawing is faster, and leaves less room for lies."</blockquote>&nbsp;This modern-day design genius planned Chandigarh, the city in India where I began my own artistic journey, and I often think about his quote when I sketch live scenes on a busy street with fellow artists.&nbsp;<figure class="image image_resized image-style-side" style="width:25%;"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/sketching_app1_705bc1433a.png" alt="sketching-app1.png" srcset="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_sketching_app1_705bc1433a.png 93w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/small_sketching_app1_705bc1433a.png 299w," sizes="100vw"></figure>When sketching in a city, I often have a clear goal to paint a scene from a busy street. I complete a sketch by adding details, highlights and architecture in the background to set the tone of a street.Demands of people moving in all their different directions—to the grocery store, to a friend's house, to a train station—are all balanced with the need to sketch a live scene.Sitting on the street sketching, I discovered drawing to be an instant form of art that I could quickly obtain feedback on... What a sense of accomplishment to share a sketch with a fellow artist!&nbsp;Over time I saw similar experiences and results from sketching during meetings. I started sketching during meetings when our team was brainstorming. Ideas would fly from everyone in every possible direction, much like the people moving on a city street. I would quickly scribble these ideas, collecting and organizing them as they appeared on my pad.&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/sketching_pic1_77018c83a0.png" alt="sketching-pic1.png" srcset="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_sketching_pic1_77018c83a0.png 188w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/small_sketching_pic1_77018c83a0.png 500w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/medium_sketching_pic1_77018c83a0.png 750w," sizes="100vw"></figure>&nbsp;Often during this process new solutions would emerge as unique elements within the sketch. From this, I would continue sketching, further refining the solution while engaging colleagues and clients attending the meeting. At the end of a meeting, I had clear notes of what was discussed, and sometimes even early sketches for a product. Over time I discovered these clear benefits to sketching in meetings.<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">Better focus and engagement</h2>The act of sketching keeps me engaged in a meeting. :) With a pencil in hand, I am the guardian of a meeting, documenting and visualizing the ideas discussed. To do this, I listen closely to what everyone says, carefully documenting each idea. Sketching helps me to follow along with conversations and, after the meeting, I retain a clear understanding of the ideas discussed.This is not just my experience. Research shows that people who are quick to draw have better recall. An <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/acp.1561/abstract">often-cited 2009 study</a> found that doodlers could recall 29% more information than non-doodlers. <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/sunni_brown?language=en">In her TED talk Doodlers, Unite!,</a> sketching expert Sunni Brown says the enhanced focus and recall is because doodling activates all four sensory prompts we use in retaining information: reading/writing, kinesthetic (touch), auditory and visual.And the focus isn't just mine. When there is sketching in a meeting, engagement soars collectively. Motivated by how quickly contributions become tangible, team members and client stakeholders openly share more ideas and feedback.&nbsp;<figure class="table"><table style="border:2px solid hsl(0, 0%, 100%);"><tbody><tr><td style="background-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-style:solid;padding:20px;">Sketch in your next meeting. Watching ideas become tangible inspires people to share more ideas.</td><td style="background-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-style:solid;padding:10px;text-align:center;"><img class="image_resized" style="width:100%;" src="https://res.cloudinary.com/mmmiah/image/upload/v1671801467/Twitter_logo_4d0b8b6fc0.svg" alt="Twitter-logo.svg"></td></tr></tbody></table></figure>&nbsp;<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">Never draw a blank with more ideas</h2>This engagement fuels idea generation. When it comes to explaining ideas at meetings, many people, especially creatives, are often at a loss for words. Many designers feel comfortable sharing their visual work, but become shy when asked to verbally express ideas.When we're ideating in a meeting, we're sketching too. That's because sketching is inclusive. It still documents the ideas spoken during the meeting, but it also invites contributions from team members who prefer visual expression.There are also times when spoken words limit the product. Words, at times, seek to define boundaries. Sketching pushes those boundaries outward so other ideas can be included. Sketching pushes us beyond the obvious solutions to a problem so that we can explore more innovative ideas.&nbsp;<figure class="table"><table style="border:2px solid hsl(0, 0%, 100%);"><tbody><tr><td style="background-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-style:solid;padding:20px;">Sketching pushes us beyond the obvious solutions to a problem so that we can explore more innovative ideas.</td><td style="background-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-style:solid;padding:10px;text-align:center;"><img class="image_resized" style="width:100%;" src="https://res.cloudinary.com/mmmiah/image/upload/v1671801467/Twitter_logo_4d0b8b6fc0.svg" alt="Twitter-logo.svg"></td></tr></tbody></table></figure>&nbsp;Without sketching, the potential for lost opportunities is high. The only ideas pushed forward come from the people who prefer talking. And we know the best solutions for people aren't always from the loudest voice in the room.In our design process, finding the best solution for people means having a wide range of ideas to test. Sketching gets us that range.&nbsp;&nbsp;<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">Shorter feedback cycles</h2>After collecting a range of ideas, fast feedback helps us to quickly refine and identify the perfect solution. With sketching, we bring instant feedback into the meeting.During meetings, we share our sketches and exchange real-time feedback that we immediately act on to further refine our ideas and bring them closer to prototypes that we can test.With sketching, creating and iterating take place in the conference room, significantly shortening feedback cycles. Within one meeting, some designers can go through multiple feedback cycles. Sometimes the process is so effective that ideas enter the meeting and leave as sketches ready for sharing with users.&nbsp;&nbsp;<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">Sketching drives a product's evolution</h2>Sketching, like other forms of <a href="http://www.intelligaia.com/6-benefits-to-design-documentation">design documentation,</a> drives a product forward and leaves a historical record of the project's evolution. It's exciting when elements of a sketch created in initial meetings make their way into the final product. Of course, many products evolve greatly over time from initial meetings to launch, with repeated sequences of design, test, design, test.See how sketching helped&nbsp;in <a href="https://intelligaia.com/work/cisco-ready">rapid concept&nbsp;development</a> for communication and approval.<figure class="image"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/design_graph_pic_202e354b11.png" alt="design-graph-pic.png" srcset="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_design_graph_pic_202e354b11.png 188w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/small_design_graph_pic_202e354b11.png 500w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/medium_design_graph_pic_202e354b11.png 750w," sizes="100vw"></figure>Sometimes those user tests force a meeting with an agenda to drastically change the product's design. In these meetings, sketching out new designs often removes the fear associated with a large, but necessary pivot to a product design.&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/sketching_app3_1e2d919f34.png" alt="sketching-app3.png" srcset="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_sketching_app3_1e2d919f34.png 245w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/small_sketching_app3_1e2d919f34.png 500w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/medium_sketching_app3_1e2d919f34.png 750w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/large_sketching_app3_1e2d919f34.png 1000w," sizes="100vw"></figure>&nbsp;<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">Bringing sketching into your meetings</h2><figure class="image image_resized image-style-side" style="width:25%;"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/sketching_app4_64edc4d225.png" alt="sketching-app4.png" srcset="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_sketching_app4_64edc4d225.png 104w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/small_sketching_app4_64edc4d225.png 333w," sizes="100vw"></figure>At Intelligaia, sketching makes up a significant portion of our DNA. And with amazing results. Still many organizations do not yet see the value of sketching. But that's changing. As organizations seek innovation, their leadership is increasingly open to processes and exercises that generate creative ideas. If you're tasked with driving innovation within your organization and looking to build a sketching culture, start in the conference room.Let skeptical leadership witness how sketching transforms a meeting into a results-driven collaborative working session. If they're worried about the perceived time involved in sketching, invite team members to draw ideas beforehand, and then block out meeting time for feedback and iterations.&nbsp;Alternatively, place someone in charge of creating an assets library on a digital tablet ahead of time. Then you'll have recurring shapes and images that can be easily copied and manipulated during the meeting to quickly visualize multiple ideas.Embrace digital forms of sketching too. Sketches on tablets become screenshots and images that can be effortlessly copied and distributed to other team members for iterating and annotating on their own devices. Of course, if your team feels more comfortable using pencil and paper to express ideas, then keep the pads accessible. Sketching&nbsp;plays an important role in <a href="https://intelligaia.com/minimum-viable-product-workshops">Design workshops</a> for smoother collaboration.Paper or digital, it doesn't matter. Just sketch during meetings. Your company depends on innovation to thrive. Don't leave the conference room with untapped ideas on the table.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

No Doodling Around! Sketching For Better Meetings

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<h1 style="margin-left:auto;">Talk Presentation At ProductCampRTP</h1> &nbsp;Markets change, technologies change, businesses change. Shouldn't the way we manage products change? Rajiv Kaul and Sandeep Chauhan, Co Founders of Intelligaia participated in the ProductCampRTP Fall Meeting held on September 13 2016. Top trainer John Mansour of Proficientz and successful entrepreneur, Todd Olson, CEO of Pendo, and Rajiv Kaul, Co-founder of Intelligaia, joined forces to help explore the evolving roles of product management for the organization and the individual over beers and bites. It was a jam packed audience keen to hear about the following topics:<ul><li>The Evolution of B2B Product Management - From Tactical Products to Strategic Solutions To communicate design decisions and how they work to resolve these problems.</li><li>The Evolution of the Role of a Product Manager</li><li>New Journey - Product Managers' Design Canons for Success</li></ul>&nbsp;&nbsp;Rajiv Kaul representing Intelligaia talked about the Canons of Design for a new journey in Product Management. He stressed how <a href="https://intelligaia.com/services">design places people at the center of everything</a> and has inspired Product Management. He feels that today's Product Manager is a also a Design Leader. He explained that every product needs a design system and is important to put the UX in the UI. The presentation was very well received by the audience and caught everyone's attention. This can be seen from the series of tweets that were sent mentioning snippets from the presentation from Intelligaia.&nbsp;<div class="raw-html-embed"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet">"Today's product manager is also a design leader." <a href="https://twitter.com/Intelligaia?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Intelligaia</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/prodmgmt?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#prodmgmt</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/productcamprtp?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#productcamprtp</a> <a href="https://t.co/2kR12MUTVp">pic.twitter.com/2kR12MUTVp</a>— pendo.io (@pendoio) <a href="https://twitter.com/pendoio/status/775853216504410112?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 14, 2016</a></blockquote> <script async="" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></div>&nbsp;<div class="raw-html-embed"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet">"Design is more than pretty pictures." <a href="https://twitter.com/Intelligaia?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Intelligaia</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/productcamprtp?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#productcamprtp</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ux?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ux</a>— pendo.io (@pendoio) <a href="https://twitter.com/pendoio/status/775857484279980032?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 14, 2016</a></blockquote> <script async="" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></div><div class="raw-html-embed"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet">Remove uncertainty! "Create and validate ideas quickly" <a href="https://twitter.com/Intelligaia?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Intelligaia</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/productcamprtp?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#productcamprtp</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ux?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ux</a> <a href="https://t.co/YPU6Ra9fKd">pic.twitter.com/YPU6Ra9fKd</a>— pendo.io (@pendoio) <a href="https://twitter.com/pendoio/status/775855337563881472?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 14, 2016</a></blockquote> <script async="" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></div>&nbsp;<div class="raw-html-embed"> 
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 "Design matters. Put users at the center" <a href="https://twitter.com/Intelligaia">@Intelligaia</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/productcamprtp?src=hash">#productcamprtp</a>
 — pendo.io (@pendoio) <a href="https://twitter.com/pendoio/status/775852376452370434">September 14,
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 </div>&nbsp;<blockquote>Design is going to be a key element of product design. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ProductCampRTP?src=hash">#ProductCampRTP</a> @ The Frontier <a href="https://t.co/kBKgzme0xh">https://t.co/kBKgzme0xh</a>— Scott Wittrock (@fixitinpost42) <a href="https://twitter.com/fixitinpost42/status/775856500996763648">September 14, 2016</a></blockquote>&nbsp;<div class="raw-html-embed"> 
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 .<a href="https://twitter.com/Intelligaia">@intelligaia</a>
 <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ProductCampRTP?src=hash">#ProductCampRTP</a>
 got everyone's attention. <a href="https://t.co/D03IIscq9Q">pic.twitter.com/D03IIscq9Q</a>
 —
 ProductCampRTP™ (@ProductCampRTP) <a href="https://twitter.com/ProductCampRTP/status/775855183632957441">September
 14, 2016</a>
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 STORY: As a (type of user), I need (goal) so I can (reason).
 <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ProductCampRTP?src=hash">#ProductCampRTP</a>
 — Scott Burleson (@scottiob) <a href="https://twitter.com/scottiob/status/775854605972406272">September 14,
 2016</a>
 </blockquote>
 <script async="" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
 </div>&nbsp;<blockquote><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/empathymatters?src=hash">#empathymatters</a> to design - know the people your product serves <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/productcamprtp?src=hash">#productcamprtp</a> <a href="https://t.co/3GNT7VLpFp">pic.twitter.com/3GNT7VLpFp</a>— Nancy MacCreery (@nancesays) <a href="https://twitter.com/nancesays/status/775853963786805248">September 14, 2016</a></blockquote>&nbsp;<div class="raw-html-embed"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet">Design places people at the center of everything <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/productcampRTP?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#productcampRTP</a>— Tuesday (@scottiob) <a href="https://twitter.com/scottiob/status/775852573085532162?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 14, 2016</a></blockquote> <script async="" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></div>&nbsp;<blockquote>How important is design? Just try using a product with a poor one!<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/productcamprtp?src=hash">#productcamprtp</a> <a href="https://t.co/YFAwC5Ti7E">pic.twitter.com/YFAwC5Ti7E</a>— Nancy MacCreery (@nancesays) <a href="https://twitter.com/nancesays/status/775852181341736960">September 14, 2016</a></blockquote>&nbsp;<a href="https://intelligaia.com/pdf/product_camp_presentation_2016-V2.pdf">Download Presentation</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

Product Managers' Design Canon For Success

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<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">Three design experts share their perspective on the increasing need for design principles in product development</h2>The ratio of engineers—the stalwarts of software—to designers at tech companies like IBM and Facebook is dropping because of the increasing role of design in the development of products.It's evident in apps like Airbnb and Robinhood, which use design to help users more easily navigate travel planning and stock trading. These companies, and many others, believe the design and user experience of their products help differentiate from competitors.Design is no longer just reserved for the "look and feel" of a product, but a factor in the overall vision of many successful companies.To learn more about the role UX design and designers are playing in product development, I sat down with the founders of Intelligaia, a UX design firm focused on enterprise products.Started in 2005 in Chandigarh, India, founders Sandeep Chauhan, Rajiv Kaul and Cheena Kaul opened offices in RTP and San Francisco to keep up with growing demand for their work. Now, the Raleigh-based founders employ more than 80 people across the company, designing for clients like HP, Cisco, and DocuSign.I've paraphrased their comments after my questions below.&nbsp;<h3 style="margin-left:0px;">Throughout your portfolio on your company website, I noticed the words compass and destination. After some inspection, I realized that the compass and destination were metaphors for users and product. Can you talk a little bit about that metaphor? I thought it was an interesting word choice</h3>The UX process has two components: objectively come up with a solution and subjectively make designs that are pleasant to the eye. With regards to the objective piece, we have to find ways to solve certain problems and map out the journeys of users. We saw compass as an apt metaphor for understanding the people using our app. We're building a product out of their need and we need to stay true to their needs just like the captain of the ship stays true to a specific direction.The metaphor is also a reminder of how we look at the process. We create apps around human centered design. There are no "users." Just humans. It's this shift from pixels to people that really defines our philosophy. We're dealing with people, we have to empathize with them, and then find the solution.&nbsp;<h3 style="margin-left:0px;">What are some misconceptions people have about design? Some people think design is just Photoshop and minimalism but personally I see it as way of thinking about things from top bottom and bottom up.</h3>They think it comes for free (laughs). You're right, it's not just aesthetics. It's evolved to mean much more. It's strategy, plan, process. Design thinking is a holistic way of looking at problems. I would say that's the big difference between art and design. Art is something you do for your own pleasure. Design has a purpose. Design has to solve a problem.Why we joke about Photoshop is because that's what the world thinks design is. But with the mass adoption of technology and people finding value when they incorporate design into their thinking, they have seen that design plays a much larger role than simply the aesthetics. For example in our sales process, we heavily emphasize our design principles.Customers often come to us with a simple aesthetic requirement. We don't just solve the immediate problem. We assess the situation using strong fundamentals of design, and only then come up with solutions for their business needs that they might not have anticipated. Without design systems in place, a business cannot scale efficiently. Educating customers is a big part of what we do.As much as we are talking about design's non-aesthetic role, it's important to not discount the craft. Design is the beauty a user ultimately interacts with. Even if there was a lot of thought and engineering that went into the product, the front facing experience is what they see and touch. Finally, it's the craft that comes out.&nbsp;<h3 style="margin-left:0px;">I was going to bring it up, but you touched upon it already. Designers are no longer just involved in the interface. They're designing the strategy and architecture of the product...</h3>Today when you're designing, you have to think about the entire process. Within the product, there can be many points of contact. So when we're designing we have to think about all the different ways a person interacts with it- online, offline, different devices, emerging technologies etc.&nbsp;<h3 style="margin-left:0px;">Do you ever get a headache imagining the possibilities? When someone comes to you with a problem and you're viewing it through this lens of design where there are no limits and assumptions are questioned, you could ostensibly change everything and go in so many directions...</h3>This is an important question. Most people don't understand this. There are lots of possibilities that could end up as the final product. But given all these options, we have to ask ourselves which one is good for my product. When we work on something new, people want to see the art of possible. We go to great lengths to research and consider the future climate of technology-not just next quarter, but down the line five years from now. <a href="https://intelligaia.com/services">We're designing for the future.</a>But to go back to your question, it's never a headache. It's more of an excitement. It can take whatever shape. It's a beautiful thing to think about. It's the joy of our work. It's a designer's dream to work on something with unlimited possibilities. We're challenged with this constantly.&nbsp;<h3 style="margin-left:0px;">What do you do when a business client comes to you with one specification but you feel it's best to take it another direction? Because you have to satisfy their needs over yours, do you ultimately go with their vision or...? Has there ever been a time you produced a work- 1 them and one for them? :)</h3>This reminds of what Henry Ford said, "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." You have to know when to push the limit sometimes.Articulating your design decisions is an art of itself. You build this up through experience. A really creative solution is not easy to sell. You have to see the other side of the table. The investor is concerned about his money and wants a practical solution that he knows will sit easy with customers. As beautiful as the iPhone was, if it wasn't functionally sound, a person wouldn't have bothered with it. In other words, you can have the most beautiful design in the world but if it's not helping the customer, there's no point. You have to balance the expectations with your creative ideas, plan within the time constraints, understand the customer, and look past the time horizons.The bottom line is you can't get too touchy about your work. Design is lot of emotional labor and one needs to balance it with rational. Justifying your decision is as important as the decision itself. That's how you build design leadership. You have to understand all points of view.&nbsp;<h3 style="margin-left:0px;">You brought up wearables. 20 years ago the web was becoming a thing. Then mobile became a thing. And then tablets became a thing. Now we have smart watches. I find voice assistants super fascinating because there's no surface. What technology are you most excited about?</h3>In the future, it won't just be visual design. It will be centered around designing the process itself. Two areas where we'll see UX playing a bigger role in the future are security and cryptocurrency. Security is a place where design hasn't been prioritized. We've all seen how design has influenced our devices. Security is going to be play an immense role in the coming years given the way the internet is invading every aspect of our lives. Look at your own device right now. How many security points do you have? A common man doesn't even worry about security.I read a piece by Jim Gosler, a cybersecurity expert, the other day. If someone hacked into Google Maps, and decided to point all the routes in one direction, it could turn into a very scary situation. We need to think about that and create measures that prevent that happening on multiple levels. Cryptocurrency is another area where design will be huge.&nbsp;<h3 style="margin-left:0px;">Right. Design is going to bleed into areas where design historically hasn't been. So far, it's been prominent in architecture and sculptures, but those are very pretty things. Security is very ugly. And no one wants to go there.</h3>You're spot on. Software design got us thinking about building apps and making giant companies out of them. Now is the time to think about how security and money can be handled through design. Right now, Square can analyze how many customers are making how much money every hour, every minute, and leverage that data to determine what loan to give based on how fast they can repay. This is completely different from traditional banking where you have to apply for loans and wait an extended period of time. It's a beautiful example of service design, where customers are at the center of the service.&nbsp;<h3 style="margin-left:0px;">Over the past 20 years, you've seen trends in UX design such as flat design. What's a trend that is trendy right now that you disagree with? What's "in" that you don't like?</h3>Endless scrolls. Those are irritating. It takes energy out of me. When is it going to end? (laughs).A lot of people like conversational chat bots but I don't. Granted they're in the early stages right now, so some kinks need to be worked out. They have a lot of potential.Trends come and go but one thing that will always stay constant is the fact that good design doesn't break. Good design is timeless. When a business or a product is built on good design, it doesn't need to go through a bunch of iterations every couple of years. It will have long term utility and meaning.&nbsp;<h3 style="margin-left:0px;">As a UX designer, is there an artist you look to and say to yourself, I want to be like that person? Growing up, did you ever say to yourself I want to have the effect that person's art has had on me on others.</h3>I was very fascinated by RK Laxman. I loved his cartoons growing up. He was the official cartoonist for Times of India for many years. He came up with the idea for The Common Man, an iconic comic strip. In a one or two-line caption and a cartoon, he could explain the essence of the political climate in India. It was like Twitter before Twitter.&nbsp;<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:25%;"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/small_globle_climate_ae79a73c4e.png" alt="small_globle_climate.png" srcset="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_small_globle_climate_ae79a73c4e.png 245w," sizes="100vw"></figure>&nbsp;<h3 style="margin-left:0px;">As a designer you need to learn to not be so emotionally invested in your work because it's ultimately someone else's and their artistic preferences take precedence over yours. It sounds like that's a lesson you've learned over time. Can you talk a little more about that?</h3>Am I actually emotionally separate from my designs? It's tough but important not to get entangled in it. You should be able to give it up. You can't cling onto something because you feel it is your "masterpiece." You should be able to scrap it and move onto another thing. This is easier said than done because we're always emotionally involved. Detachment can never be fully there, but being aware of this feeling is critical.&nbsp;<h3 style="margin-left:0px;">What is one piece of advice you want to leave with UX and product designers?</h3>Balance time between prototyping and research. Have a clear intent of what are you creating- it's an invaluable soft skill that a designer can bring into the team.Young designers can benefit from sketching. Devices and software exist to help out with this but the hand drawn sketch is the foundation. A designer needs to have better hand control than a common person even if it's just a wireframe. It has to go beyond scribbles. You have to hand over something that is clear to interaction designers and investors alike.Another thing I would say is for them to spend more time applying knowledge rather than just simply compiling it. Derive benefits from research work. They overemphasize it to the point of never leaving it. Leonardo Da Vinci too made vigilant observations about the real world. But he also took that a step further and came up with solutions. So I would say, designers should be able to apply that knowledge and create something with it.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;

Q&A: Intelligaia Founders On The Value Of UX Design

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The rising popularity of Alexa, along with other popular voice-powered assistants like Apple's Siri and Microsoft's Cortana, shows us that human-computer interaction is no longer solely dependent on a bright screen. As a result UX designers are shifting their focus to a more expansive approach that considers all of a user's senses and provides even brighter opportunities for delivering the perfect experience.While exploring this expanding playground for UX designers, I recently published <a href="https://medium.com/@cheenakaul/hi-alexa-c22d3866c71b#.tynquulr8">a conversation with Alexa on Medium.</a> This conversation appears here along with my notes from a UX perspective. Enjoy!"Hi Alexa!!"It's a delight to have you around. I am still getting used to you though. I guess the feeling is mutual! "Remind me to grab a bag of tomatoes when I go grocery shopping tomorrow, will you?"Alexa and future voice-powered virtual assistants will be designed to act much like a UX designer. It will listen to the user and anticipate her wants and needs, often before the user is even aware of what those desires actually are.I like the way you read out my favorite book to me, but I was wondering how to get you to read another to me. Maybe you love the same books as I do? Perhaps. We'll have to figure that out soon. ...Well, we actually did figure it out! Wish you could recommend something from my list. I can't seem to remember all the books I have, and—believe me—it's a long list.This conversation reflects a user's desire to establish and experience a deeper bond with technology. Future voice interfaces will likely evolve to take on distinct personas, with specific pitches, tones, vocabulary and personalities tailored to each user's wants and needs across a variety of contexts and scenarios.I wish you could sense from my tone, what I might or should listen to. While you were happily playing all the short jazz samples one after the other, I was wondering how to let you know that I wanted you to stop and play the one I really liked.Every user's needs are complex and vary based on the context. To deliver an amazing user experience, technology should be designed to appropriately respond to each of these scenarios.Future voice interfaces will analyze the user's emotional cues, such as pitch and intonation, to deliver a desired experience at any given time.&nbsp;<figure class="table"><table style="border:2px solid hsl(0, 0%, 100%);"><tbody><tr><td style="background-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-style:solid;padding:20px;">Future voice interfaces will use pitch and intonation to deliver a UX that meets a user's emotional needs.</td><td style="background-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-style:solid;padding:10px;text-align:center;"><img class="image_resized" style="width:100%;" src="https://res.cloudinary.com/mmmiah/image/upload/v1671801467/Twitter_logo_4d0b8b6fc0.svg" alt="Twitter-logo.svg"></td></tr></tbody></table></figure>&nbsp;According to a recent article in <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601654/amazon-working-on-making-alexa-recognize-your-emotions/">MIT Technology Review,</a> Amazon is already developing natural language processing updates for Alexa. These changes will allow the virtual assistant to anticipate a user's feelings and then deliver a corresponding experience that aligns with those emotions.Before I ask you another joke today, I would really appreciate if you could tell my 10-year-old a nice bedtime story. Am I asking for too much? Hmm. I need to get some of those smart lights to see how you go about that, of course. ...You are welcome to sit in that corner but don't be so quiet; you can utter a few words off and on and maybe we could become the best of friends...someday. Although you did fire up while I was chatting to my brother on the phone. I don't know what prompted that! You started telling a joke, of all the things! LOL! BTW, thanks for reading out the recipe, it has turned out quite good!&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/medium_recipe_masala_chai_6eb366c78a.jpg" alt="medium_recipe_masala_chai.jpg" srcset="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_medium_recipe_masala_chai_6eb366c78a.jpg 122w,https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/small_medium_recipe_masala_chai_6eb366c78a.jpg 391w," sizes="100vw"></figure>&nbsp;While Alexa's functionality isn't perfect, her jokes are no accident. The jokes intentionally give Alexa a personality that is relatable and invites a deeper bond with the user-akin to a friendship. By designing a personality for Alexa, Amazon has delivered a strong branded experience. Future technology designed with a personality that engages multiple senses will establish a richer bond with a user and win greater mindshare for a brand. With the overcrowding of technology in our lives, meeting the needs of our multiple senses won't be too much to ask. It will be expected.Up for some chai?&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;

Getting To Know Alexa And The Future Of Design

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<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">Seeking rejuvenation from a brisk walk in the wilderness, Beth and Chris go for a weekend hike.</h2> On their mountain ramble, Beth and Chris inhale the crisp, mountain air and savor views of snow-capped peaks. On the trail they discover chipmunks and squirrels, and even catch a rare glimpse of a bald eagle.For more than 2 million annual visitors to a US National Park, this is a perfect experience.But this walk is not perfect. Chris, after slipping on a rock, falls down a mountain, injuring himself.Enter LASSI.No, not Lassie, the pop culture Border Collie known for rescuing her human friends in the wilderness. A drone. A drone called Land/Air Support Service Instrument.Using a chip contained in a wearable on Chris's wrist, LASSI finds the injured hiker. LASSI sends photos of Chris and his ankle injury to park rangers, who then send an emergency response unit to his location.Long story short, Beth and Chris are rescued. Chris goes home with some bruises and a cast on his ankle. But he goes home.LASSI— a product that combines wearable tech, an app and a drone—has the power to save lives. And an estimated 120-140 visitors to US National Parks die each year (<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/08/12/forget-bears-heres-what-really-kills-people-at-national-parks/">source</a>). How many of these lives could LASSI save?Right now, LASSI is just an idea. But it's brilliant, and capable of impact beyond measure. And it was developed by a few minds at <a href="https://intelligaia.com/product-camp-rtp">ProductCampRTP</a> in under an hour.Using design thinking, we created a journey map of two hypothetical hikers, Beth and Chris. During our mapping exercise, we uncovered an innovative idea with the power to save lives and transform outdoor rescue operations around the world.Journey mapping is a powerful tool that anyone can use to better understand the people they serve, whether it's a hiker or employees or customers.&nbsp;<figure class="table"><table style="border:2px solid hsl(0, 0%, 100%);"><tbody><tr><td style="background-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-style:solid;padding:20px;">Journey mapping is a powerful tool for understanding people and discovering new ways to help them.</td><td style="background-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-color:hsl(0, 0%, 100%);border-style:solid;padding:10px;text-align:center;"><img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/Twitter_logo_4511c1ecb9.svg" alt="Twitter_logo.svg"></td></tr></tbody></table></figure>&nbsp;<img src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/journey_map_5f80d79474_1_0d35203aec.svg" alt="journey_map_5f80d79474 (1).svg">LASSI isn't a one-off eureka moment either. At Intelligaia, using our design process, we quickly generate innovative ideas that transform lives and businesses all the time.Thanks to design thinking, Chris is alive. And can live his story. Use design thinking to find your <a href="https://intelligaia.com/minimum-viable-product-workshops">innovative idea</a>. Live your story.&nbsp;<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">Key Points</h2><ul><li>Inspiration from the next innovative product can come from anywhere, including pop culture.</li><li>Journey mapping is a powerful tool for understanding people and discovering ways to help them.</li></ul>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

Take A Walk With LASSI

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<h2 style="margin-left:0px;">TGIF!! And what a beautiful Friday it is!</h2> The past few days were quite crazy as you all know. Rain. Wind. Rain. Wind. Power outage. Weather alerts. No school. Wait. Watch. Wait. Watch.I was checking the weather updates like never before. Scanning through every detail. Overwhelming, it was!! Flood warnings were coming by the dozen and then came in some tornado warnings too. Thankfully no flood and no tornado arrived. They were just sending all the info for all the neighboring areas. Nothing was telling me about the condition in my region, the place I was situated in. Wish they could be more specific. More contextual!Even though we are only a hundred miles away from the impact, I had no idea what to look forward to. Most stores ran out of supplies, especially water! Thanks to amazon, the good old amazon, I quickly purchased a whole bunch of water bottles on the way to the grocery store. ‘Something’ stopped me from informing all my friends to do that as well. By evening I was informed that it will be delayed and come only after the storm was gone. However, they did send it before the storm hit us! Later got to know that a lot of people were going back to the stores to return all the water they had gathered. I thoroughly thanked that ‘something’! Most often people need to know only what they really need to know. Nothing more, nothing less. As designers, we need to make things as easy as possible for the user. See how we did this for a retail process&nbsp;<a href="https://intelligaia.com/work/4r-systems">ensuring&nbsp;consumer&nbsp;happiness</a>. There is a lesson in there for the designer in me!&nbsp;<figure class="table"><table style="border:1px solid hsl(0, 75%, 60%);"><tbody><tr><td style="background-color:hsl(0, 0%, 90%);border-color:hsl(0, 0%, 90%);border-style:solid;">&nbsp;</td><td style="border-color:hsl(0, 0%, 90%);border-style:solid;padding:50px;text-align:center;">What if I was given only the info I needed at that moment that I needed it?</td><td style="background-color:hsl(0, 0%, 90%);border-color:hsl(0, 0%, 90%);border-style:solid;">&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td style="background-color:hsl(0, 0%, 90%);border-color:hsl(0, 0%, 90%);border-style:solid;">&nbsp;</td><td style="border-color:hsl(0, 0%, 90%);border-style:solid;padding:50px;text-align:center;">What if I was told to get hold of an emergency kit just in case I needed it and where to get one?</td><td style="background-color:hsl(0, 0%, 90%);border-color:hsl(0, 0%, 90%);border-style:solid;">&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td style="background-color:hsl(0, 0%, 90%);border-color:hsl(0, 0%, 90%);border-style:solid;">&nbsp;</td><td style="border-color:hsl(0, 0%, 90%);border-style:solid;padding:50px;text-align:center;">What if technology helped me to better prepare instead of showing me news that I didn’t need?</td><td style="background-color:hsl(0, 0%, 90%);border-color:hsl(0, 0%, 90%);border-style:solid;">&nbsp;</td></tr><tr><td style="background-color:hsl(0, 0%, 90%);border-color:hsl(0, 0%, 90%);border-style:solid;">&nbsp;</td><td style="border-color:hsl(0, 0%, 90%);border-style:solid;padding:50px;text-align:center;">What if it helped those who needed it the most?</td><td style="background-color:hsl(0, 0%, 90%);border-color:hsl(0, 0%, 90%);border-style:solid;">&nbsp;</td></tr></tbody></table></figure>&nbsp;There was a power outage for a few hours, but things were okay. There was no technology to help us out. There was no internet. I could no longer enter the web! I guess I didn’t need the information any more. What was to be was actually happening then, in that moment. That was all the information I really needed. I was prepared.We were safe...but it wasn’t so for many others. They were struggling. They still are. It will take them long to settle back in, to gauge the damage, to take it all in.All through this there was a glimmer of hope when the sun showed up for a very brief moment. Everything lit up and there was a sparkle amidst the gray.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

THANK GOD IT'S FRIDAY!!

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1. <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/unthinkable-with-jay-acunzo/id1094103598">Unthinkable with Jay Acunzo</a><img class="image_resized" style="width:19.42%;" src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/313x0w_92ea16fcde.webp" alt="313x0w.webp" srcset="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_313x0w_92ea16fcde.webp 156w," sizes="100vw">Jay Acunzo hosts a cool podcast called "Unthinkable." He chats about listening to your inner voice to make awesome, sometimes different, choices. Jay's worked at big places like Google and HubSpot and loves to share tales of people doing their own thing, which inspires us to think differently and be creative.What's super cool about it?&nbsp;There's this special set of episodes called&nbsp;Signature Stories. These are the stories that the people who made them are really proud of and that the listeners love the most.<blockquote><h1>“You don’t find great stories, you build them!”</h1>- Jay Acunzo &nbsp;</blockquote>&nbsp;Some episodes you shouldn't missJay Baer, who wrote&nbsp;<a href="https://www.thetimetowin.com/the-time-to-win">The Time To Win</a> and six other business books. He talks about the importance of gathering stories from everyday life and how to shape these stories to share a cool lesson or idea. <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/unthinkable-with-jay-acunzo/id1094103598?i=1000635397280">Listen Now</a> ↗&nbsp;And you don’t want to miss this one!Simone Stolzoff is the author of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.simonestolzoff.com/">The Good Enough Job: Reclaiming Life from Work</a>. He started with poetry in school and has lots of thoughts on how to live a life that's not all about work. He gives tips on finding amazing stories, something that's super useful no matter what you like to do.&nbsp; <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/unthinkable-with-jay-acunzo/id1094103598?i=1000634599556">Listen Now</a> ↗They also talk about how to find inspiration in the world around you to create new stories or projects. It's all about noticing the little things and turning them into something great.How Stories Happen - Launching Brand New Show (finding the inspiration to the world you actually experience)<blockquote><h1>“Great stories happen to those who can tell them”</h1>- Ira Glass &nbsp;</blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;2. <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/design-matters-with-debbie-millman/id328074695">Design Matters with Debbie Millman</a><img class="image_resized" style="width:19.29%;" src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/design_matters_c59be6192d.webp" alt="design-matters.webp" srcset="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_design_matters_c59be6192d.webp 156w," sizes="100vw">Debbie is super good at asking questions that make you think, and she knows a lot about art and design. It's been around for 19 years, making it one of the oldest shows talking about creative stuff. Debbie chats with artists and designers to find out what makes them tick and shares it with us.Why It Stands Out: Listening to Debbie has been an incredible journey of learning and inspiration for me. Her unique interviewing style, and&nbsp; conversations with guests have provided me with invaluable insights into the creative process and the realities of working in design and other creative fields.&nbsp;Key Episodes &amp; Topics:&nbsp;Debbie’s conversation with Milton Glaser, the legendary graphic designer behind the "I ♥ NY" logo, from 2009 was a masterclass in understanding the power of design in shaping cultural conversations. I found this gem on the <a href="https://www.designmattersmedia.com/">show website</a>, and it's a must-listen that's not available on <a href="https://www.designmattersmedia.com/podcast/2009/milton-glaser">Apple Podcasts</a>.&nbsp;Massimo’s philosophy of 'timeless design' reshaped my understanding of simplicity and functionality in creativity. Insights on the significance of discipline and the power of design systems have profoundly influenced my approach to design practice. <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/design-matters-with-debbie-millman/id328074695?i=1000541494884">Listen Now</a> ↗<blockquote><h1>“And remember, we can talk about making a difference, we can make a difference, or we can do both.”</h1>- Debbie Millman &nbsp;</blockquote>&nbsp; 3. <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/invisible-machines-podcast-by-ux-magazine/id1022990588">Invisible Machines</a>&nbsp;<img class="image_resized" style="width:20.27%;" src="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/invisible_machines_77ec37926c.webp" alt="invisible-machines.webp" srcset="https://strapi-aws-s3-images-bucket-intelligaia-website.s3.ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/thumbnail_invisible_machines_77ec37926c.webp 156w," sizes="100vw">I've been listening to the Invisible Machines podcast lately, because Robb and Josh break down complex concepts like conversational AI and hyper automation into easily digestible insights. It&nbsp;has definitely made me more curious about the potential of these technologies!Why It Stands Out: Rob and Josh offer a panoramic view of tech integrated into our lives.&nbsp;I appreciate how they tie technologies back to real business problems and UX. e.g. Hyper Automation tools can automate onboarding new employees workflows.&nbsp; Collecting, managing data seamlessly, also triggering welcome emails, system access setup, and the most important scheduling orientations.&nbsp;Key Episodes &amp; Topics:&nbsp;UX and AI, Context is Everything with Sarah Gibbons and Kate Moran of Nielsen Norman GroupInteresting point discussed was the potential over-reliance on conversational UI. Sarah and Kate emphasized the importance of exploring the ways to interact with the text, for example, in the responses.&nbsp;They also touched on the concept of “Articulation Barrier.” This barrier points to the opportunity for UX designers to create systems that can understand and interpret a wide range of human inputs.Imagine you have a magic box that can do lots of different things - like a phone, camera, and game console all in one. Instead of switching between different boxes for different needs, you're using just one for everything. This makes you have to think about what you're doing with it more carefully because it's like playing different games using just one toy. This is context switching in simple words. Researchers are really interested in how you figure out which game you want to play with your magic box and how they can make it easier for you to switch between games without getting confused. <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/invisible-machines-podcast-by-ux-magazine/id1022990588?i=1000642097673">Listen Now</a> ↗&nbsp;&nbsp;Don Norman, Author and ResearcherShifting towards humanity centered design from Human Centered Design. Key aspects of Humanity Centered Design Societal Impact, Sustainability, Ethical Considerations And Long-Term Thinking.&nbsp;&nbsp;After&nbsp;listening to the podcast, I believe the key arguments that Don emphasizes: intelligence is diverse, not necessarily a single quantifiable number. AI is good with pattern recognition, not so much with understanding. Education system should shift towards cooperation and teamwork through projects - that’s how things get done in real life. Most importantly, evolving tech is bringing systemic change, that creates an opportunity for panoramic design possibilities.&nbsp; <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/invisible-machines-podcast-by-ux-magazine/id1022990588?i=1000617152469">Listen Now</a> ↗<blockquote><h1>“The notion of productivity, trying to maximize productivity is actually minimizing it because what you try to do is get the most work out of each person permitted.”</h1>- Don Norman&nbsp;</blockquote>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

A Curated List of  3 Must-Listen Podcasts for Innovators and Thinkers

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