Indian users ‘ke liye chalta hain’

This article was originally shared on — https://www.yujdesigns.com/designing-for-indian-users/

Since the economic liberalization in the early 1990s, the Indian market has slowly opened itself to foreign investments across sectors. More so in the past 10-15 years. Several multinational companies who entered deep into Indian markets with the confidence of global success behind them were in for a shock. Nobody thought that the country of origin, while eliciting respect from buyers, would not necessarily translate into buying. The reason – the offerings were not ‘Made for India’. From consumer electronics to automobile to retail – the experiences are telling. It’s a kind of image and profitability trap that businesses are likely to fall into. Looking at the huge potential of an emerging market and disregarding the fact that a certain amount of reinvention is required to capture it.

A global-leading beverage company entered India and bought out India’s most popular home-grown cola and almost killed it as a part of its strategy. The assumption was that their own brand was good enough to take on its other global competitor. After taking a bad hit on the retail shop floors, the MNC realized the potential of the local brand and revived it again. More than 20 years since the local brand is still the market leader in India. A global leading automobile company has grown to become one of India’s largest manufacturers, growing at a rate of more than 40 percent a year over the last decade. They did two things right – they built a local plant, setting up an R&D facility to understand what really matters to the Indian market, and they appointed a popular Indian figure as their brand ambassador.

When it comes to User Experience Design, the case of ‘Making for India’ and ‘Designing for India’ becomes far stronger. Primarily because in the digital environments, everything is crunched – building cycles, buying decisions, reaction times. Businesses have to get it right the first time. Even if they take longer to get to the first time. A world-leading ecommerce company spent a significant amount of time localizing their content before they launched services in India. All the while aware that other, newer players are already nibbling into the huge market for ecommerce. But it not just about localizing content or offering language options, it is really about empathizing with the Indian ethos and how it impacts business strategy. It is about understanding what makes the Indian user different. Years back, a global mobile phone maker appointed a team of researchers to find out what kind of features an entry-level mobile phone should have in India. While the strategy to do so itself is visionary, the outcome was one of the most iconic mobile phones this country has ever seen.

There are exceptions to this kind of an approach. Or at least one exception. But that is an example that has defied all market laws across the world. This is, of course, the phone that seduced everyone just by what it was and what it did. No customization. One standard that changed the world. Businesses that are introducing new products or services in India or are expanding their market to India need to be cognizant that they are not necessarily the ‘dent in the universe’. And that their India strategy, both business and UX, needs to start from scratch. The stories of failure are numerable. And in each case, whether or not other factors are involved, there is bound to be a strategy that is devoid of ‘Making for India’ or ‘Designing for India’. The costs of ignoring this now proven reality can be very hard to recover.

About Us:
YUJ Designs is one of the top UX Design studio in India providing consultancy as well as end-to-end solutions to B2B & B2C Fortune 500 enterprises

Think You've found Out the best UX Design Studio? Take This Quiz

A lot of industries are seeking services from UX design studios, accepting the change that UX adds on as a business success metric. Although almost everyone knows a great UX when they see one, not everyone can create those experiences suitable to your requirements, helping you deliver delight to the customers.

In order to ascertain, if you have really found out the best UX design studio to work with, you need to ask the right questions, like the ones mentioned below. If your answer to all these questions is positive, bravo! You need not speculate anymore. Trust their talent. If not, well, you can now consider these questions as a framework to confirm if the next UX design studio is the right fit for you or not.

Take the quiz:

1. Define the Purpose:

Are you aware of what UX is?

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Multiple studies have shown that the best ideas can emerge from merging insights from varied fields. Similarly, in order to extract the most from a UX designer’s expertise, being UX mature is very important.

What are your requirements?

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You need to first understand the WHY do I need help and then only proceed to WHO can help me.

2. Lean into Curiosity:

Does the UX design studio understand your industry and your requirements?

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It is a prerogative, that a UX designer understands the industry, the norms, requirements and the demands on the part of design. Also, a company that stays curious and open to gaining more knowledge.

3. Knowledge and Expertise:

Have you seen their portfolio?

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The approach, process and the results they deliver should be coherent with your expectations and needs. The company should be good at -
Creative Visions + Critical & Accurate Thinking.

4. A Good Alliance:

Do they have a collaborative attitude?

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Companies that work in collaboration with their customers, on an average succeed more. These studios partner with their clients and work towards the growth of their client’s company together.

5. Style of working:

Do you know and agree with their working style, process?

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When you hire a UX design studio, it is important that you understand how do they function. For a successful alliance, getting to know each other’s working styles is essential.

6. Communication Skills:

How well can they communicate?

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Communication is a natural extension of a designer’s craft. Communication is how a design studio performs a job.

7. Strategic Skills:

Can they develop and deploy effective strategies?

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Determine how well the studio can identify patterns and work on a strategy to meet business demands and address user needs.

8. Problem Solving:

Can they solve a problem?

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You need a design partner who can solve business and customer problems with design; not just move pixels around. Best UX design studio would provide -

Assessment + Challenge + Support = Great Results

9. Time Management:

Are they productive?

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The key to manage time and deadlines while delivering 10x impact is to prioritize. In order to be more productive, time management done well on the designer’s part, is of the essence.

10. Reviews & Testimonials:

What do they have to say?

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Success of companies benefited by the contribution of the UX design studio would be the best reflection of their quality of work.

Bottomline learning: Focus on your priorities. See the big picture. And ask the right questions. These will lead you to your ideal UX design partner.

YUJ DESIGNS: Top Rated UX Design Studio

This article was originally shared on – https://businessconnectindia.in/company-of-the-year-2019/yuj-designs/
YUJ Designs is one of the few successful User Experience Design Consultants from India that primarily focus on user experience design and its impact on people. YUJ Designs was founded in 2009 by Mr. Samir Chabukswar & Mr. Prasadd Bartakke, with the aim to solve business problems through a human-centered approach. The absence of UX awareness & maturity of design in the Indian context motivated them to enter this market as a pure-play design company.

Humanizing technology through their progressive, user-centered design solutions, YUJ has created a reputation in India and abroad. They are known to deliver solutions that make business sense and ROI for customers, users, and product developers. This trait has made them one of the strongest contenders to be the best UX Design Company in the market.

Punching above its weight

The overall experience of a person’s interaction with an application or a product – User Experience- is critical to the success of any product. In this digital day and age, the key to success is to attract, engage, and delight customers using your company’s products. YUJ understands this and uses a blend of cognitive psychology, design thinking, innovation, and engineering to create delightful experiences. They aim to provide easy-to-access technology and make the user’s life more convenient by providing them a connected physical and digital experience.
Mr. Samir Chabukswar says UX design is the differentiator of today and tomorrow. It is a science that can make impact on millions.

Headquartered in Pune, YUJ Designs has clients across the United States, Europe, India, and APAC regions. Their clients range from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies, software product companies, and other UX mature companies. 70% of their clients are B2B, Business Enterprises like supply chain, BFSI, and technology, and the rest 30% are B2C, e-commerce, IoT connected technology, and start-ups. The domains they work in are varied (60+), and since UX design is domain agnostic, and they want to keep it that way. The company has received attention and recognition from the western world for their research-based design approach, which is quite unusual for an India-based company. The company has offices in Sunnyvale, CA, USA and Pune, Bengaluru in India. YUJ employees also work at client locations across all major metro cities in India.

They have so far worked on 2000+ projects, of which almost all have met an astounding business success.  Most of the products they have designed have garnered a return on investment between 2x-5x. Their company provides on-the-job training to its employees, using Mr. Prasadd and Mr. Samir’s prior experience with US-based companies. They rely heavily on market and individual research to frame problems presented to them accurately and accordingly present the required solutions to their clients. They have brought the scientific and consultative approach to India that is prevalent in the western marketplace.

Growth Mindset

More than mere designers, YUJ Designs believes in working as consultants, who dig deeper into customer’s problems and provide them with long-term solutions. Mr. Prasadd metaphorically explains it as curing the disease at its root, instead of just treating surface-level symptoms. They provide clarity of business model to the customer, who is more often delighted with the consultative approach rather than a superficial service approach.

They take pride in the designs they produce which are informed through data sources. They are hailed as one of the Top 5 UX design companies in India, have been recognized by Silicon India, have featured in the list of Top 15 Global Companies on the Clutch website, and have been marked “The Company of The Year” by CIO magazine. They have built a reputation not just for themselves but for India in UX Design Industry worldwide.

A good leader is the one who creates a team of confident high performers who can be the torch-bearer of the brand promise. YUJ Designs exemplifies this example. The company provides an environment where the employees are given the freedom to express themselves, take up initiatives, learn and grow. An organization with a horizontal hierarchy where the employees are intermittently recognized for their achievements and given ample opportunities to develop their core skills further. Instead of being a leader-driven company, YUJ Designs is driven by the values and high-standard work produced by the employees of the company.

Resources that will make you better at UX design

User experience design is the most talked-about and most-searched-for profession these days in India. UX Design has evolved into one hyper-growth industry. It is a requisite now, that people who have a wide range of skills generally do better in this field. One day the designers will be doing user research - interviewing customers, stakeholders, setting up brand voice, analyzing user insights, and the next day they’ll be white-boarding, designing interfaces. At some point they’ll be preparing the A and the B variations to test, busy rethinking how to focus time and increase productivity without compromising on the output.

Skills and expertise are bound together. Specialization implies mastery, and being an adaptable designer who seamlessly enters myriad spaces, roles and efficiently solves problems. Broadly, the design industry asks for versatility from its youngsters.

So, how does a designer prep for these industry demands and ride through these waves of change triumphant? To answer this question, we are enlisting a few resources that you will require to equip yourself with the required knowledge, skills and thinking.

1. Develop Design Mindset:

Deeply, relentlessly ambitious. Eternally inquisitive. These are some of the fundamental mindsets of a designer. Learn to ask the right questions. Be observant of the patterns in business and cultures. Equip yourself with this mindset so that you can ask the question, “Does this call to action button support or contradict what I am trying to communicate to the user?” And the answers will direct you to refine and improve the design; the little things that often go unnoticed, that ultimately enhance the user experience.

2. Books & Publications:

The UX industry may not be that old but, there are one too many publications and good books to read about available in the market. Read lots of content with special focus on design standards and best practices. Reading blogs, books, methods, watching informative videosof tools to keep updated about what’s happening in user experience design proves incredibly helpful.

3. UX Design Courses:

There are a lot of design practitioners and institutes that offer courses dedicated to UX design  in the form of practical tips, useful guidelines, best practices and case studies. A lot of these forums/ websites provide treasures of information on interaction design where you can learn directly from industry experts. Up-skilling is the norm these days. This is a good way to do just that.

4. Learning from the Heroes:

There are so many modern-day bigwigs and leaders we look up to. Veteran user experience mentors are offering collective ‘evidence-based’ research, opinions and interviews online these days. It is very easy to follow their thoughts and teachings these days. Learning from them, does add value whether you are just beginning or working towards taking your career to the next level.

5. Self-education:

There are many people who prefer learning new skills when working. R&d for better ways to accomplish tasks at hand, getting to know a new software or even how to follow certain methodologies. All of this content is available online where, sections like freebies, tutorialsare a resourceful collection of e-books and design kits!

6. Design Inspiration and Criticism:

There are also certain platforms where one can upload their work, get feedback, also comment and appreciate other people’s work. It is very important for designers to be in a clear and inspired state of mind. Inspiration can be found on many popular websites.

7. Psychology:

Emotions shape all our activities in adaptive ways. In the absence of psychological insights, decision making is virtually impossible to design for users. Understanding the importance of psychology in design is highly important. Persuading users through design can improve user experience. Understanding psychological triggers, the behavior of users is crucial in order to better engage them.

8. Design Projects on Personal Time:

Working on personal design projects other than the regular work, is an adventure in itself to know yourself and the world around you better. It challenges out-of-the-box thinking. Works wonders for the creative soul definitely increases your confidence levels and instills a pure problem-solving attitude.

9. UX Writing as a Design Strategy:

One of the primary goals of any good designer is communicating the intended message. The one that leads to a positive user experience. Be it talking the stakeholders in signing-off your designs. A designer communicates through UX writing, the color of text, the alignment of form labels are all part of this communication. Being able to guide the user through the obstacles they’re facing without being too noticeable and providing a positive experience through the written word is important.

10. Drawing parallels:

Crafting human-centered experiences are by nature of shared experiences. Engaging with users leads you to understand their authentic experiences. Similarly, interacting with people, in general, garners a similar effect. The more you interact with people, learn from their experiences, the more equipped you will be in terms of dealing with unsatisfied users, negative insights about designs and overall client relationship management. Also, drawing parallels from relevant industries benefits you as a designer, in many ways.

Explaining UX Design to a lay person – A designer’s guide

Every UX designer knows the joys and frustrations of explaining what she or he does to people who do not have a background to UX Design. And there can be as many number of ways as there are designers, each with its own track record of success and failure in articulation.

Having been through it again and again, with family members, friends and people in social gatherings, I have managed to identify a couple of best practices in explaining the meaning of UX Design to lay persons.

Don’t be in a hurry: Just as it is with the design process, take your time to empathize with the curiosity of your audience and get an estimate of the levels of curiosity. This will give you a good idea of how much information to share and how to pace your articulation.

Ascertain the audience’s exposure to designed products: Ask questions to know whether or not your audience has used designed products before. And if they have, what kind of products they have used – digital or physical. Find out what they have loved using and what they have disliked or have not felt strongly about at all.

Describe the outcomes of good and bad UX Design: Take examples from everyday life, such as the TV remote menu, bread toaster, overhead projector etc. to describe UX design thought and effort that might have gone behind those products. Be sparring in sharing the process of research, personas, wireframes, prototyping, etc.

Refrain from sharing a definition: Definitions of UX, by their very construct and bias towards accuracy and inclusion, tend to be technical. It is safe to assume that a lay person will find definitions off-putting.

Compare with other fields of endeavor that the audience understands: Art or engineering or programming are fields people generally understand – draw parallels and differences between these fields and UX Design.

Full article is originally shared on – YUJ Designs

Focus Groups is a good technique according to a top UX company

The principal the differentiator of a UX design company is that user preferences have a say in this category. The designer tweaks his designs based on customer preferences. This usually results in an overall better design. There are different ways using which you can judge customer preferences e.g.- the user interviews and contextual inquiries. In this article, we shall focus on a different kind of procedure to gauge customer preferences like focus groups. Top UX design studios use this method to get a better understanding of customer preferences. Let us look at the finer aspects of this method.

A designer’s bias

A designer has a particular view in mind while creating the designs. He does his best to look at the designs from different angles. However, certain angles do remain unexplored. The logic that one cannot check his or her own work comes to the forefront. Hence, it is always better to have an outsider/ independent point of view.

It’s all about the perspective

When you conduct customer interviews you get to understand her/ his views, opinions, journey and the struggle. Similarly, you are able to gauge customer preferences in the contextual inquiry as you are able to watch her/ his reactions to the problems under different circumstances. This gives you an idea of the user behavior the pattern in turn leading to understanding the changes required to project design. You can simulate a similar atmosphere in a closed room as well. This concept is known as the Focus Groups concept. Let us see how this concept works.


Focus Groups:

Leverage the power of group discussions

In this concept you have different people with diverse backgrounds assembling in a room to discuss the aspects of a design problem. Each person has a separate view of the functionality of the product. A moderator directs the discussion in a constructive manner. He guides the members subtly to focus on the areas you wish to observe them explore. This room has a one-way mirror for viewing your body language while you voice your opinions. This is a good way of evaluating designs because you get independent third party reviews just in the similar way you would have got from customers who actually used the design.

Based on this feedback, you can modify the designs to best suit the needs of the users. One of the best ways of incorporating changes in designs is to have a healthy mix of all the procedures. When you have different people evaluating your designs, you benefit more as you get different views at the same time. The customer’s choice is the main criteria when designing a product. When independent people evaluate your designs they take these factors into consideration with an unbiased mind. They bring a completely different angle to the entire proceedings. They generate a lot of constructive positive and negative reviews in the bargain. This results in a fantastic product that passes several quality checks before coming into the market.

Benefits and ROI of UX Design

This article is originally shared on – https://www.yujdesigns.com/benefits-roi-ux-design/


If design is not the center of your business, you are possibly missing out on opportunities to flourish in the digital age. Businesses are so much focused on their marketing outcomes that they overlook design in the haste of getting better ROI. Whereas, design should be a core piece of your business since it gives a competitive edge.

Traditionally, design was about beauty and aesthetics, but for the past few decades, design has taken a fabulous twist. Today, it is not only about making products look beautiful, but also about providing experience of interacting with the products. Businesses are continuously struggling to find ways to survive in the cutthroat competition and to have an edge over their competitors. Whether it is a website, application or any product, design creates a delightful and smooth experience for the user. Such seamless and fulfilling user experience is important for businesses since it helps in satisfying customers by offering enhanced usability and delightful interaction with the product. The improved customer satisfaction through design helps in attracting and retaining customers and selling a large number of products thereby giving competitive and profitable advantage.

Need help to take your business to the next level?
Design principles are so fascinating that they are being used as guiding points for transforming businesses. As a result, a term ‘business design’ is popped up, which is about applying design thinking to the businesses. Though design approach is quite significant, all companies are not embracing it. However, design works for every type of business.

To define exactly why design is a good business decision, we have a list of proven reasons. If you agree, leave your thoughts in the Comments Section!

• Business statistics

Out of $1 trillion spent last year, $150 billion is lost alone because of poor usability or user experience. $300 billion is the cost of poor customer service in 16 key economies. 8-year stock performance of companies focusing on experience has been more than 100%. The chances of customers recommending your product, paying more for your product or not switching to your competitors’ products increases dramatically if you focus on customer experience and user experience. DMI’s Design Value Index (DVI) has surpassed any other index by whopping 219%. A study by the UK Council and US Council has revealed that every dollar invested in design returns upto $100. These are real statistics by real people and real organisations that tell you the importance of having design or working with design teams.

• Enhances User Experience

In today’s world, user experience is a differentiating factor and design plays a significant role in offering an engaging experience to users. A good design engages your users and since they are happy with the experience you are offering, they less likely switch to your competitors. As per a CEI survey, 86% of the customers pay more for a better user experience. So, designing user experience considering end user can make a huge impact to the bottom line of a business.

• Attracts new customers and retains existing ones

A good design does not only mean the look or appearance of the product, it is about solving problems and enhancing its usability and accessibility. It provides your users a direct and easy way to the product information that they are looking for. Design helps you expand into new markets probably by designing the product according to the preferences of your target market. Along with acquiring new customers, a fresh design keeps your existing customers interested and help you contend with your competitors.

• Strong Customer Trust

Generally, digital products fail because modern users are not ready to labor through unpleasant user experiences. Users know that there are several other competitors willing to satisfy them. A design offering delightful experience creates positive perception of your brand that creates strong customer trust. Businesses providing high-level user experience are more likely to have customers recommending their brand to others. So, a design that creates a pleasant and seamless user experience gives you a power to have an edge over your competitors.

• Adds Value to Products

Effective design gives your users a reason to buy from you rather than from your competitors. It is an important source of differentiation since a well-designed product stands out from the competition. Design adds value to products because users are ready to pay more for well-designed products that can offer higher usability, improved functionality and aesthetics.

• Improves market position

Design process generate new product ideas, which then can be turned into innovative and competitive products suitable for your users. It also helps in making business processes more effective and in strengthening marketing approach. Design creates a strong identity for your business and improves your market position relative to your competitors.

About Us:

YUJ Designs is one of the top UX Design companies in India. Our work ensures both, a delightful product experience and a positive impact on customer's top line.