WEB DESIGN

 

Design – We require a page can explain about designing (UI/UX apps icons would be great)

We don’t design an interface; we craft an experience.

Experience isn’t about superficial appearance, it’s about the product’s personality. Experience isn’t how you think people will use your product, it’s about how your customers emotionally connect with your product. Experience isn’t static, it flows with time. Experience isn’t a wireframe, it’s about strategy. We love what we do. We love to partner with people who care about human experience of their products.

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HEAR

Phase 1: Discover the Opportunity

Human beings are a complicated species!

Experience isn’t deaf. It’s about your users. They are humans. They have needs. They have emotions. They have desires. They carry an attitude towards life. They need to have a good reason to change the way they do things. And it’s important we listen to them.

  • User Research
  • Field Studies
  • Stakeholder Interviews
  • Competitive Analysis
  • Card Sorting
  • Contextual Inquiry
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LEARN

Phase 2: Define the Problem

Human ecosystems are complex!

Experience isn’t just about your users. It’s much broader than that. It’s like a chain of things. It’s about their families. It’s about their friends. It’s about how they socialize. It’s about complex decision making. It’s about an emotional journey of your users. And it’s important we map out how these ecosystems work.

  • Personae
  • Ecosystem Mapping
  • Empathy Mapping
  • Journey Mapping
  • User Stories
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IDEATE

Phase 3: Design the Solution

Fail ideas spawn in thin air, promising ideas are based on facts!

Experience isn’t about coming up with wildest of design ideas. It’s about a factual decision making. It’s about translating what we learnt into a promising design direction. It’s time to conceptualise a strong foundation for your product.

  • Design Concepts
  • Information Architecture
  • Structural Design
  • Product Strategy
  • Concept Testing
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CREATE

Phase 4: Deliver the Product

Great design is more science, than art!

Experience isn’t just about beauty. It’s about crafting designs that matches the cognitive limits of human minds. It’s about crafting a natural conversation with your users through your product. It’s about making your users feel welcome when they use your product. It’s about creating a romance between your product and it’s users.

  • Interaction Design
  • Visual Strategy
  • Visual Design
  • Micro interactions
  • Prototypes
  • Usability Testing

What we do

DESIGN AS A SOLUTION

PRODUCT STRATEGY

We help you with research. We present you factual insights. We help you conceptualize design solutions. We help you ideate. Together, we build a strong strategy for the product.

USER INTERFACE DESIGN

We help you with designs. We demonstrate how they look, and how they work. We help you design a scalable structure. We design for mobile and the web. We help you with pixel perfect style guides and interface specifications, down to the last pixel. 

IDENTITY DESIGN

Your product might be feature-rich with high-end technologies. But your brand is what people will remember you by. A brand is not just a name or a logo. It is who you are to the world. We help you define your brand with thoughtful insights and an awesome customer experience.

 

Naked Facts

Facts, Beliefs, Trivia

“Be ready to tell us. Hey guys, Hold on. Stop overthinking about a problem”.

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Design stories

We learn, We share

 

UX RESEARCH

eCommerce Shopping Cart — No. of items or Cart Value?

Shopping cart has become the name of the game for e-commerce websites like Amazon, Flipkart, or for any e-retailer that you can think of. It has become a common experience metaphor used widely in the online world.

However, the way the cart’s behavior is modelled isn’t always the same. There are subtle nuances (not very apparent as you shop) that often vary across these sites.

Recently, we were designing an experience for a mobile application that allowed sports fans to order snacks & drinks inside a basketball stadium. It’s like you are watching a game in the stadium, cheering for your team, emotions are high, and you would like to order something to munch on as you watch the game. Well, from an experience perspective, understanding the environment was crucial to craft the right experience. Like considering the implications of fans cheering on their teams, noise levels inside the stadium, not so well-lit arenas, the game being the central part of their focus, etc. This blog isn’t going to talk about all the design considerations, but will talk about something small, which turned out to be a brain teaser.

This app, as it turned out, had a CART metaphor, again! One of these subtleties was the choice between showing the number of items in the cart v/s the total cost of the cart, or both? Well, sounds like we never notice this when we shop online, but yes, we wanted to ensure the design decisions follow a strong rationale, no matter how small the decision was. Also, we didn’t want to copy somebody, just because “they did it like that…”.

There has been a lot of discussion on this topic, some advocating that we show both pieces of information while others suggesting that either no. of items or the cart value should suffice. Certainly, each approach comes with its own rationale.

Our study led us to settle down to show ONLY the number of items in the cart, and not the total cost of the cart, and here’s why:

Cart concept is a borrowed concept. It started from the e-commerce domain. The shopping behavior in websites like amazon is different from what we had in our case. Amazon (or any other e-commerce marketplace) for instance, will have an extensive portfolio of products. Our app. on the other hand was going to have a shallow menu to choose snacks and drinks from.

Number of Items (yes, our choice):

Our portfolio of items/menu was shallow. It’s wasn’t like amazon where users will spend maybe half an hour or more to go and browse, pick up stuff. Another thing to notice is people don’t buy multiples (of the same product) on amazon. You won’t buy (usually) 3 MacBook’s at the same time, and then add 3 more iPhones over it. And that’s the same reason you won’t see the choice of many items when you are picking up the item on such sites.

In our case, it was different. It’s more about quickly browsing the menu, and one of the primary actions was to add multiples of the same item (imagine you going to the stadium to watch a match with your family and friends). Multiple burgers, beers will most likely end up in your cart.

We thus made the feedback of adding an item (or its multiples) very clear by associating the action with its implications on the cart. Like every tap bounces the cart and the number increments.

Another question, should 4 burgers, 2 fries = 6 items or 2 items. Seems like not a big deal, but something to ponder on. We went for the initial choice (i.e. 6 items) since the action of adding an item is closely tied up with its implication on the cart. The feedback sets up a good mental model and shows how this thing works (and the number of items you end up picking at the pickup counter).

Price of the Cart:

Here we tried to answer a higher-level question, which was to think about the importance of the cart icon on the top-right of the screen (something common you see). At a very high level, the cart sits there mainly to give a sense that there is something there to be checked out. Showing total price of items along with the cart doesn’t seem to offer too much of value. Will users not order if the cart shows $30 instead of $28? It’s an in-stadium experience, users are not going to care too much about the final cost of the cart. It’s like you going to a theater to watch a movie. Will you not buy popcorns for 5 times their regular price? And not to mention we were levying a few dollars of the convenience fee. Cost doesn’t seem to thus make too much sense along the cart icon in this experience.

We finally agreed on this equation:

We show number of items (4 burgers2, 2 fries) = 6 items

We ensure the interactions (like cart bounces) + visual emphasis (we can further highlight the cart for e.g. once items are added)

Although the spatial position of the cart is evident and common, we can include with it a forward chevron to give a sense of further navigation to the checkout screen.

Well, something small, but turned out to be quite a brain teaser. Certainly, this equation might turn out to be different in the context of what you are designing for. Thinking about these subtleties, after all makes the whole difference.

UX SURGERIES

Interesting Differences in B2B v/s B2C World

User experience design has really got deep into both enterprise and the consumer digital world. This has resulted in some interesting observations in terms of how product owners respond to UX services, depending on whether the product undergoing UX surgery falls into B2B or a B2C category.

Let’s Talk B2B Products: This landscape is changing and changing fast. Competition is aggressive, and B2B companies have realized UX can give them an edge in the competitive landscape. Consumerization of UX is on the roll; product owners no longer want to continue with the ugly face of their products. They are open to design companies who can perform a complete UX surgery on their products. They are open to revisit the product strategy, they are open to relook at the information architecture, they are really open to a new freshness UX designers bring on the table. In short, they want to simplify the legacy which has grown into a beast. Unlike in the B2C world, enterprise product owners have a slight advantage. Their users are ‘paid’ to use the product. Whether the surgery is forced down-the-throat of the end users or is welcomed by them, they do not have an option to refuse. Keeping the pessimism aside; 99.9% times a UX surgery is like fresh air and takes the user experience to the next level.

Let’s Talk B2C Products: This is a different landscape altogether, and for a good reason. It’s all about money, it’s about revenues. It’s like touching a live wire. Consumers have all the reasons to switch to competing products without a second thought. In such a context, you’ve got to be careful. B2C product owners, for this reason, are normally apprehensive about design revamps. Nobody wants to see a negative impact on their customer base.

As a UX consultant, this game can pose some new challenges in front of you. You can get too constrained to try out new things. In such cases, it’s your responsibility to educate your clients about possible ways to make the transition happen, to rationalize your design suggestions. It’s up to you to know the rules of the game, strategize the transition. To help your client meet the business objectives and grow their customer base, and progressively transition the existing customers to the new experience. Technically, a B2C design project should place more emphasis on user research, validation and testing techniques like concept testing, A/B testing, in qualitative or quantitative forms. These activities should find a proper presence in the design roadmap. After all, the facts derived from quantitative and qualitative research/testing techniques should inform how you transition the users to a new experience, and still meet the business objectives.