Prototyping & Usability Testing

I’ve spoken about the importance of user research in a product development cycle in my previous blog. What comes after a solid user research is the phase of prototyping and testing, and these are just as critical as user research. Research, Prototyping and, Usability Testing form the salt and spices of a well balanced dish (yes, we care a lot about food). A dish can be cooked without salt or spice, but you won’t have too many people liking it. The story is very similar in the case of product development too. A product built on assumptions and poor testing will eventually find itself difficult to accommodate the needs of its users and will need more fixing,which translates to a lot of wasted time.

A Wireframe is not a prototype.

While it’s very easy to get confused between a wireframe and a prototype, they’re quite different. A wireframe is a rough visualization of the proof of concept. They are stuff that we sketch on paper or on tools like Balsamiq that gives a rough idea of what an interface looks like. However, the scope of a wireframe ends there. A collection of wireframes that are related to each other and help a user complete a task flow qualifies as a prototype. Mockups are similar to wireframes too, just that their fidelity (level of detail)  would be different.

What is prototyping?

Prototyping is a quick an easy way to validate our ideas based on the research information we have. It is a proof of concept and not the actual product itself. And it should not be the actual product. Prototyping is done in the very early stages of ideation to understand what works for users and what doesn’t in order to quickly iterate based on the learnings from these tests. An important thing to note about prototyping is that ‘Prototypes are messy’. And that is how they should be. When thinking of testing, it’s very easy to confuse a prototype for a high-fidelity mockup. They’re two different entities altogether. While usability testing is done on both the interfaces, the purpose and the goals of the testing are very different. With a low fidelity prototype we test if users can figure out their way through the task and reach their goal in the expected way. A high fidelity mockup test would reveal if people can find the right buttons or if they like the colors. Understanding what we’re testing is very important to get the right data.

Usability Testing

Usability testing is an amalgamation of art and science. It is more than just watching users complete a task using a prototype or product. The real purpose of conducting a usability testing is not to see if a user can complete the task, but why they’re doing what they’re doing. It’s not a test of the users but of their interaction with the system. If you read the previous sentence clearly, I defined two important facets of design: Interaction Design and Usability Testing. Interaction design is all about creating a dialogue between a user and a system while Usability testing is about understand how the dialogue takes place. While conducting a usability test, it’s all about reading between the lines.

While usability testing is a very detailed subject in itself, I will give a quick list of the most important things to consider before and while conducting a usability test.

• When testing with a low fidelity prototype (A set of wireframes), we should make it clear to the participants that they’re not testing an actual product and it is just a proof of concept built to validate the design decisions. Using the findings of the usability test we would build a high fidelity prototype/mockup.
• Recruit wisely. Do not get people who’d be biased and who are involved in the working of the project. Getting unbiased and candid feedback is the most effective way to build a solid product. Also, do not test with more than 6-8 users per iteration. That’s a good enough number to uncover most usability issues in the prototype.
• Explain the purpose of the test to the participants clearly. When they know why they’re doing something, they’ll have more ownership on their actions and they’ll be more involved in the test, which will give us better findings.
• Remind the users that they’re not being tested, but the prototype and whatever they do are not any of their mistakes. This helps them be more candid with their opinion.
• Always ask participants to ‘think out loud’. Think-out-loud is a beautiful process to understand the psychology of our users. Asking them to speak out what they’re thinking lets us know their thought process which is very important in understanding their mental model.
• Another thing to remember is that people do not remember instructions very well. They tend to get distracted and veer away from the task or may stop thinking out loud. As moderators, we’ve to be aware of their actions and give subtle reminders to think out loud or take another look at the task list.
• If they’re completing a specific task, hand them a clear task list that tells them what they’re supposed to achieve. Also, do not be too specific with the tasks. For example, instead of telling ‘Click on the back’ button’, tell ‘do task x’. Let them figure out where to click. Also, having a clear task list will help participants stay on the task and not get distracted and lost in the middle of a task.
• Before every new task, ask them to read out the task loud. This will keep the task more firmly in their mind.
• Avoid helping users or giving them leading hints. Telling them ‘Ok you can press that button now’ is a direct hint and when people are testing, they WILL more often than not, click it even if they didn’t want to. As tempting as it is to help people when they seems lost, it’s important to know that they do not get such help when they’re using the product on their own. Let participants explore and figure their way out all the while making notes of what’s going on.
• If a person cannot find something and asks you what to do next, do not tell them what to do, rather respond back with a question that helps you learn more. For example, when they cannot find a back button to a webpage, get stuck and ask for help, ask them what they’d usually expect in such a scenario, what they want to do and if they were to design the webpage, where they’d put the back button. It’s amazing how many things we think of as obvious are a total mystery to other people. And sometimes people give the best suggestions from their experience.
• When you find that they’re completely lost and cannot find their way around, give them a couple of minutes to see if they can recover from the error. If they still cannot, give a subtle hint to see if they can find their way from there. If that doesn’t work as well, note that as a major usability issue, ask them what they’d expect and move them to the next task. At any point, Do not make them feel like they’re dumb.
• It’s very important to constantly ask them to explain their actions and decisions. But their explanations must be taken with a pinch of salt. There is a difference between what people do and what they tell. This is why every usability test must have a well triangulated recording process. Usually usability tests will have a moderator, a note taker, screen and audio/video recording tools to correlate data.
• Give close attention to their expressions. People are usually quite expressive and usually give out subtle feedback using non-verbal hints. For example a soft ‘hmmmm!’ to express surprise or a quick ‘oh shit!’ are all very important hints that something they didn’t expect happened. It’s important to note these moments and ask them with a follow-up question ‘please tell me why you said ‘oh shit!’.
• The purpose of a usability test is not always to find faults in a system. If they like something, it is just as important to ask them why they liked it. Even if they do not tell, as moderators, we must make sure to find out the positives of the design. Knowing what worked will give designers a direction to go forward and iterate the design.
• Start and end the usability test with a short interview. Before the test ask users about their experience using similar products, their frustrations, likes and their expectations. End it by asking their experience using the prototype, what they liked or disliked about it, what was most challenging and what they’d change if they could. Understanding their thought process is the goal of a usability test.

Knowing these points above is very important for a successful prototype design and testing. While it appears simple, its quite hard to stay focused while creating prototypes and testing with users. It’s very easy to slip into the user mentality and when we lose focus, we end up losing a lot of data and waste considerable amount of time both for us and the participants.

Prototyping and Usability studies are the equivalent to a physical structure’s foundation. While it may take some extra time and effort, going through these processes gives a product a very solid backbone which can later be used to build upon during successive iterations. This avoids the problem of building a product and later discovering it doesn’t work for its user. This is the reason why companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter put such heavy emphasis on research and design. They understand their users’ needs, goals and frustrations before designing a product and that’s what makes a cult-following billion dollar product.

(image credit: usabilitygeek.com)

Seattle for Indian Students

This has been long pending. I faced quite a lot of problems when I first moved to Seattle for my higher education at The University of Washington and I always wished there was better information about the university, accommodation, food and living in general. And in the wake of the next batch of students coming in, I hope the information I’m going to cover here would be of more help for the incoming students. This series informs all about the life at The University of Washington and all the information here is based of my experiences in the last 8 months.
(Note: Opinions and views are purely personal and you are free to take my suggestions or ignore them if they don’t seem fit. Arguments will be ignored.)

Accommodation 

There are two types of accommodation students choose here: On campus accommodation provided by the university and off-campus accommodation in and around the university, more popularly known as the U District. Both have their own advantages and disadvantages.

On campus accommodation is relatively the more expensive option. It costs about ~$1000/month and includes a furnished room with kitchen, wi-fi, dishwasher, electricity and water, and access to study lounges. From what I have heard, apartments don’t have washing machines and you have to go to a laundry area to wash your clothes. The on-campus apartments aren’t really ‘on-campus’. They’re a block away from the university, although they’re the closest. Students need to apply for housing and get their apartments before landing here. Check for dates and deadlines in the UW Housing page.

If the on-campus option are beyond your budget, there are tons of off-campus apartments  around the campus in the u district. In fact, most of the residents of u district are students of UDub. The rates however, vary a lot depending on the location, amenities and size of the apartment/home. Although it costs lesser than on-campus, housing in the UDistrict is not cheap and the rates generally vary from $400-$700/person/month. The best way to look for these places are in websites like Zillow, Craigslist or Padmapper or get in touch with senior students to see if someone is vacating their place or looking for roommates. The lease period varies depending on the owner and most owners usually take a month’s advance rent as deposit.

A Note on Roommates if you’re living off-campus: Finding people who you get along well with is very important. Make sure you communicate the kitchen and other household responsibilities with your potential roommates before moving in. Grad life can be very hectic and you get very little time outside the coursework to take care of home and kitchen. It’s a tricky thing, but make schedules and distribute work evenly before moving in be very explicit about who does what and when. We didn’t do that and maintaining the kitchen and trash was a pain-in-the-bottomside.

Edit: Off-campus housing usually charge a deposit which would usually be between $700-$900 and some apartments add first month’s rent to the deposit for international students. While moving in, some of the apartments take the first and the last month’s rent. There would be a $60-$80 application fee for each member of the apartment. When you move out, you will get the deposit back sans the cleaning and repair costs which could be anywhere between $300-$500 depending on the condition you leave the apartment in.

Hypothetically if you rent an apartment whose rent is $1500/month, then in the worst case, you’d have to pay: [Deposit – $800 + $1500 + $80] + [First & Last month rent – $3,000] =  $5,380. That being said, it is left to the discretion of the apartment managers to charge you the aforementioned fees.

Food

The Ave is the most popular place for students in the UDistrict and it is a great place that has plenty of international cuisine options. You can have food from every part of the world depending on your mood. There are a lot of Thai and Chinese places along with Indian, Mexican, Mediterranean, Hawaiian and classic American Burger joints. Most of the stuff cost between $7-$12 for a filling meal. Some of my favorite places are (I’m a vegetarian. Cant speak for meat dishes):

1. The Burger hut: This place makes the spiciest desi burgers. My regular order is the ‘Spicy Paneer Burger with Fries’.
2. The Little Thai: Has great noodles. Can get as spicy as you like. My favorite is the Spicy Singapore Noodles.
3. QDoba: This is my favorite Mexican place. Their Burritos are pretty great. They’re very filling and healthy.
4. Hawaiian BBQ: Has a ton of options to choose from. For a vegetarian though, the choices are limited. I take the vegetarian noodle and it tastes somewhat similar to our Indian veg noodles. Not very healthy though.
5. Garam Masala: This is a desi restaurant run by a Pakistani person. They make some really good naan and curry. I also like their vegetarian Biryani.
6. Taste of India: This is not on the Ave. It’s about half an hour’s walk away from the campus, but this place serves the best Indian food in the U-District.
7. Anjappar: Bellevue has a huge Indian community and there are a lot of Desi restaurants. I haven’t been to many, but Anjappar is by far the best Indian restaurant I’ve been to in Seattle. The place is  quite far though, about an hour away by bus (Logistics covered in the transport section) but the trip is totally worth for the authentic South Indian food they serve.
8. Subway: They’re everywhere and pretty standard.

There is a huge cafeteria on campus in the ‘HUB’ building. They have a lot of options too, however, very limited for a vegetarian and hence I cannot speak much about the place.

Groceries: There are a couple of places in the UDistrict where we get our daily groceries from. The Safeway on the 15th Ave is the most popular place to get all the usual vegetables, cereals, milk and other drinks.

For desi stuff unfortunately, there isn’t a huge place for it in the UDistrict. One must go to Bellevue, an hour away by bus, where there are two big desi grocery stores: Mayuri and Apna Bazaar. They have pretty much every desi supply you’d ever need. The perks of traveling is a chance to dine at the Anjappar restaurant.

(Note: There is a restaurant called Udupi restaurant next to Anjappar. I paid a visit assuming they’re from Udupi and hoping to eat a plate of authentic Idli and Sambar. Worst decision)

Safety

One of the first questions I get asked about the university is regarding the safety, especially for HCDE since we have all-evening classes. Firstly, the reason HCDE has its classes in the evening is because it’s a professional continuing education program, which means your classmates be working professionals who work during the day and attend classes in the evening. While safety is a very subjective matter, in my personal experience I have never found U-district dangerous by any means. Most of the times I would walk back home with my friends and this being a university area, there would always be students and people on the streets. Having said that, there have been certain unfortunate incidents in the past and we must be in our caution. The university also provides many facilities for students. There are night-rides that go around the u-district ferrying students, and if need be, you can also get an escort from the campus to your residence. I have never tried that service and I’m not exactly sure about the process.

All things said, I’d probably rate the campus as a pretty safe place. I have never heard of any shooting type incidents like the ones we hear from other campuses. The people are very friendly and usually mind their own business unless we go calling for trouble.My advice would be to not wander around late in the night away from the main roads. And that’s the case with most cities in the world.

(more coming soon….)

 

Why Choosing To Become A UX Designer Was The Best Decision I Ever Made

I always believe things happen in life for a reason. I’m studying master’s in Human Centered Design and Engineering at the University of Washington. As a graduate looking to get some experience and make some money, I applied for several positions to work as a Research Assistant on campus. I couldn’t make it, some due to lack of experience and some due to mismatch in role. Although I was upset, I never stopped looking and luckily I got a chance to work on a research project at the Department of Psychiatry as a User Researcher.

The objective of the project was to study stress patterns in people and come up with interventions that can help people cope better with stress. As a part of the research, I had to interview people and ask them questions, some of which no one would have ever asked them before. This was an opportunity for people to really open up to things they would probably find very uncomfortable talking in their private lives. Most of the times I could relate to what people were saying with my own stress patterns. Things like getting the feeling of being lost, losing focus, anxiety were some recurring themes.

However, one interview changed my perspectives. I interviewed a middle aged person, who had several complications in his life. He was suffering from several health, familial and financial issues which were compounding the stress levels in him. He suffered from sleep apnea which made it difficult for him to sleep for more than 2 hours at a stretch. Although, I had seen similar issues in my life before, this was the first time I heard in the shoes of someone believed to solve his problem. And while I felt I had big problems in life, I was humbled by learning the magnitude of problems people faced every day in their lives. Although the interview left me a bit shaken by the end, it gave me a reassurance I was always looking for — That choosing to become a UX Designer was the best decision I have ever made.

As a designer, my job is to listen to a user, empathize with his/her problems, and come up with solutions to problems that I previously thought had no solutions to. And this, is what I beleieve is the greatest challenge for a designer. It’s not just about designing interfaces and making things prettier, it’s about solving problems that make a significant difference in people’s lives. It’s about designing experiences that make people’s lives better. Be it with Eventosaur or the research work I’m doing at The university, every project poses me with unique problems in people’s lives and coming up with solutions to those problems is what drives me and gives me the greatest joy.

I am by no means a successful designer or a problem solver. I am far from that, but having made the choice to be on that path is what I am most satisfied with. Some day I hope to meet that person I interviewed and listen to him say “The solution your team designed helped me sleep better now and that makes me feel good” and I would have done my job.

Visual Communication Work

In the Winter quarter (2016) I had taken a course called Visual Communication (HCDE508). It was perhaps the most fun class I have ever been in. I learned a lot about all aspects of visual communication like typography, colors, layouts and harmony between them. It was a very refreshing experience and the course involved a lot of fun assignments and exercises. Here are the collection of all the design work I did during the quarter as a part of this class.

Text as image

In this exercise we were given a bunch of words and we had to create typograms that depicted the meaning of that word. I chose to play with ‘Fold’, ‘Organize’ & ‘Inflate’.

1. Fold

2. Organize

3. Inflate

 

Color Harmony

In this class I learned about color theory, different color combinations and how colors can be used to change the mood of a visual element.

Layouts

In the next exercise we were asked to explore complex layouts using images, fonts and colors. The assignment involved creating two posters for an astronomy event at the Museum of Flight. We  I used Illustrator and Photoshop to create the posters.

Poster Version 1

I chose to use the negative space between the Earth and the Moon to add text. I used the Courier font for the body to bring out the effect of the 60s when space exploration was taking off. The Montserrat font (the title) with it’s rounded curves complimented the squarish Courier.

Poster Version 2

In this version I extracted the background in the shape of the text and used a gradient across the background image to make the text more legible. I used Montserrat again for the text. (I was in love with the font for some reason).

 

Final Assignment

The final assignment was the most challenging. The topic was very interesting. We had to create a website (web & mobile) version and a print poster for a speaker series event based on a topic of our interest. The topic I chose was something which is very close to my heart, Classical music. I created a speaker series called ‘Colors of Music’. My speakers were Dr. Rajan Parrikar, Dr. Ramesh Gangolli, Prof. Sunil Mukhi and Ustad. Zakir Hussain.

I chose vibrant colors as it represented the vivid, contrasting and dynamic characteristics of Hindustani classical music. The colors also represent the colors of my country’s national flag, from where the music first originated.

Web Version

 

Mobile Version

 

 

Poster

A Night Owl’s Guide to Waking Up Early

Looks like I have done it. It didn’t happen with a glowing ring of sun behind my head, but it was more of an organic change if I may say. After having tried and failed for the last 15 recallable years, looks like this weird hack to wake up early has finally started working. (Tl;dr version in the end if you don’t have time to read the big story)

I have tried everything from multiple alarm clocks to keeping coffee ready in the kitchen to recording my own voice as the alarm. But nothing worked. Even if I did wake up early, I would have a hard time keeping myself awake even after drinking coffee or taking bath. I would be groggy eyed and sitting like a zombie. However when I woke up at 8:30 or 9am, I would be very fresh and relaxed. What I didn’t understand was why didn’t I feel like this when I woke up at 6. What made the difference? I read articles after articles on every blog, Quora and Medium and couldn’t seem to do what they were all talking about waking up early.

Turns out, what we do to wake up, is as unique to us as are our fingerprints. According to science, we need a minimum of 6–8 hours of sleep depending on our age. I wont get into the intricacies now, but essentially under-sleeping or over-sleeping is not ideal for the body. It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out why this was happening. And it was a very simple analysis. I wasn’t getting enough sleep. I was pushing my body to wake up before it was even ready. I would sleep late and expect myself to wake up early which was not ok for my body.

So I made a couple of small tweaks to the plan, which quite magically has started working. First, Instead of calculating what time I wanted to wake up, I started calculating how much of sleep time I needed depending on how tired I was. If it was a normal day, I figured out that 6 hours was a good amount of sleep. If I was tired, around 8 hours sleep seemed to be the ideal amount. Next, based on that, I changed the time I went to bed. I started going to sleep at 9:30 or 10pm. It felt weird in the beginning, especially being used to sleeping at 12:30 or 1am, but it wasn’t as hard to get used to as it was to wake up. All I had to do was eat, read a book for half an hour and I close my eyes. (Luckily for me, falling asleep isn’t that big a problem).

And then it worked. I ended waking up between 3:00–3:30 am. And I didn’t feel as groggy as I would before. Also, I would set the alarm at least 30 mins before I wanted to wake up so that I could take that 30 mins to ‘roll around’. During that time, I would try to keep my eyes open as much as possible. I started reading an article on my mobile screen so that the screen would wake me up. And after waking up, for the first couple of days, I ran into the bathroom and took cold shower that would really kick out any residual sleep.

The 10:30pm-3:30 am plan started working. And I stuck with it till it became a habit. Of course there were days when I just couldn’t wake up or when my work kept me up till 12am. I wouldn’t force myself on those days. I even sleep till 9am. Turns out the circadian clock has a will of it’s own. Be nice to it and it will be nice to you.

Eventually, I adjusted the time so that I would go to bed at 11 in the night and wake up at 4:30 or 5 in the morning. Right now I am at that stage where I am getting comfortable waking up early without feeling the need to roll back to sleep. I won’t say I have conquered my sleep yet. Sometimes I end up feeling sleepy at 9am and I sleep till 12pm. But I sleep knowing that I woke up at 4 and got some serious amount of work done early in the morning, which is an extremely satisfying feeling. Nowadays I wake up 5:30 am max. I keep three alarms at 30 mins intervals from 4:30am (depending on when I sleep or when I want to wake up). And I use the morning time to do things I usually don’t get time to do otherwise. Like writing blog posts, learning new things or getting the pending work done. Knowing that I get these extra 3–4 hours in the morning is like discovering a productivity goldmine.

I strange to know that it actually took me such a seemingly complicated effort to just wake up, but I guess it had to be done to form a good habit. Now go ahead and discover your crazy secret to wake up early. Please share if it works.

Tl;dr:

1. Body needs minimum amount of sleep. Varies from 6–8 hours based on body type and lifestyle.
2. Sleep early to wake up early.
3. Start with a crazy 8pm-2am or 9pm-3am cycle and slowly change it to your required start time.
4. Take a cold shower. It’s difficult. But the first 30 seconds of the cold water hitting your body is the best kick your body needs to wake up. When the body adjusts to the temperature, you won’t even feel the cold water. It just feels like normal water.
5. Try to keep eyes open as much as possible after the alarm goes off. The ’10 more minutes’ is the greatest enemy. In fact, snooze button should have never existed in the first place. It’s an evil plan to put us back to sleep.
6. Key is to get used to waking up when it’s still dark outside.
7. Make it a habit.
8. Done.

P.S: This post was quite instrumental in helping me be more productive: https://medium.com/life-learning/8-things-every-person-should-do-before-8-a-m-cc0233e15c8d#.y7ewjqe9i

Writing the right Statement of Purpose and Letter of Recommendation

I keep getting requests from people asking me to review their SOPs and Recommendation letters. I thought I might add some tips on what I think is the right approach to writing a good SOP and recommendation letters.

1. When you’re writing an SOP, always remember, the profs have about 2-3 minutes to decide whether you’re in or out. Nobody reads the whole story carefully to really understand. It’s your job to write succinctly and to convince them in less than 2-3 mins about your goals and ideas. Remove all fluff. Whatever does not directly help your chances of getting an admit, chuck it out, no matter how passionate you’re about it.

2. Be very articulate and maintain a consistent flow. Do not write it like an elongated resume.

3. Every statement you make should have a solid backing and it must be relevant to your applying for the course. Do not make vague statements that confuse the readers.

4. It’s not necessary to have a flowery SOP (as served in silver plates by the scam consultancies). Content is always far more valuable than presentation. As long as you’ve a good story and a strong passion towards the subject explained in a fluent narrative, an SOP with simple words is more than enough to get you through.

5. A general tip to start would be to write everything you ever want to write in an empty document ,relevant or not. Once you have everything written in, start chopping down. It’s hard to get rid of certain parts of the story, but be ruthless about it. Anything not directly relevant, cannot stay. Once that is done, start optimizing the paragraphs and sentences. Group together similar incidents or projects. Try to combine 2-3 sentences into one small sentence keeping the meaning intact. Stop at every paragraph and ask yourself ‘Is this relevant to the subject?’ If the answer is yes, keep it, if not don’t.

6. Have a strong opening and closing paragraphs. Do not write cliched sentences that says “I was born to study this course in your university”. If that is true, substantiate and explain why. Do not make any claims go unexplained. Also, write clearly why you’re applying for that particular program, what inspired you to apply and why you’re a good fit. This is super important.

7. Avoid going to the consultancies who promise to write your SOPs. No one can write your story better than yourself. Writing a SOP is an iterative process. It takes at least 8-10 iterations to get a good SOP. I myself had 23 versions of my SOP by the time I submitted it. Make sure you find yourself a mentor and work with them on your SOP.  There are a lot of kind people in the world who’d be glad to help you out. Consultancies aren’t the mentors you’re looking for.

8. Sometimes we may have to write our own recommendation letters. In such cases, don’t copy-paste glittery flattery from a LOR template online. There will be 500 other people telling the exact same thing in all their LORs. If you have to stand out, make sure you have a unique story to tell in the words of your recommender. Recollect incidents of working with them, what made your recommender impressed about you, what were your contributions to the department, university or any institution you were a part of? How did you make a difference to the place you studied/worked at?These are the things which get noticed easily between all the ‘He was a very hard-working and one of the brightest students in the class”. Remember, LORs are not written to satisfy our ego or make us feel good about ourselves (it’s easy to get carried away while writing about ourselves).

Hope this helps. All the best.

What is User Research and Why is it important?

User research is one of the most important stages of product development but it is something we often don’t give as much attention we ought to be giving. It is something we should be taking seriously because at the core of user research lies empathy. The power to understand other people. Unless we know whom we are designing for or what their problems are, it is very difficult to design the right product. User research is a powerful tool that helps us answer these questions. This article is a 10,000 feet overview of what user research is and what difference it makes to problem development.

Often, a great place to start developing a product is by identifying the problems we face ourselves, or the problems faced by our close family members. More often than not, these problems will be shared by other people as well. And that is where User Research comes to picture. Once we identify the problem, we need to start looking for people who share the same problem. Conversely, we must also figure out if the problem we are facing is also being faced by other people. We must then go on to understand who are these people, how is the problem affecting their lives and what are they presently doing to overcome those problems. This can be done by employing several User Research methods like contextual inquiry, observation, surveys and interviews. Ideo’s method cards has a great collection of techniques that helps us understand our target audience depending on the type of idea we’re working on.

Conducting a user research not only validates our ideas, but also helps us narrow down on our design question. Most ideas generally start out as solutions to a very broad question. At the beginning of one of my HCDE projects, we started out with an idea to solve all the problems of international students arriving at Seattle and making them feel more at home. While the motive behind the idea was good, our scope was too wide. When we started digging deep into the design question, ‘How might we help International students feel more at home?’, we started running into several questions, like:  Where are these students coming from? What are their problems? Do they all face the same problems or does the severity of the problems vary between the students? And many more.

We conducted a user research to get answers to these questions. We posted an online survey, interviewed several international students and we observed their daily lives. After we conducted the research, we could see a trend in the data gathered. There were some problems which affected a certain section of people more than others; There were problems only a certain age-group faced while the rest didn’t seem to be bothered by it etc. This data revealed insights to us which we never had even thought of when we started. After analyzing the data collected, we finally narrowed our scope to helping international students find reliable off-campus accommodation when they land in Seattle.

This exercise made it very easy for us to focus on the most important problem faced by our target customers. More often than not, the problem they face would be completely different or a different form of what we think is the problem they face. Conducting a user research bridges that gap between the us designers and the users and makes it very easy to communicate between each other using the product we design as the medium. We can understand their problem better and the users can understand the solution better and this creates a beautiful product-customer ecosystem. This is what makes people love the products they use, because they are designed with the users in mind. They solve the exact problem faced by the user. Ultimately, this is what is called User-Centered Design.

Non-Returning User Feedback

It’s important to get feedback on your product and our mentor can’t stress that enough.

I was thinking of some ways to make getting feedback a more natural thing. More than getting feedback from users, it’s important to get feedback from people who shy away from using the product. And getting that feedback is more challenging. People tend to close the tab if they don’t like a product or if they aren’t convinced. The trick is to get their attention in those few seconds between their first visit and them closing the tab or deleting the app and ask them the reason for not liking the product or their reason to not use the service/product.

This helps us founders understand what’s not working in the product, what is pissing people off and where we can improve to retain those floating customer.

Effects of Upbringing on Confidence and Leadership

I believe a person’s upbringing plays a great role in his leadership and confidence levels. Although these are things that can be learned and developed over a period of time, the way a person has been brought up in his childhood plays a significant role in how he/she is shaped in the later stages of their lives. Childhood and the environment someone grows up in lays the platform or the trend for their entire behavioural pattern as adults.

The confidence and gregariousness of a person depends on his relationship with his parents and the early childhood friendships. Kids who are let free to express their thoughts and are given that leeway to live without (unnecessary?)restrictions more often than not turn out to be confident people with great leadership skills. The traits of a good leader mostly lies in his ability to think, take decisions and responsibilities. This can happen when kids are exposed to free thinking and given opportunities to take risks and make mistakes early in their childhood. This gives them the ability to figure out what’s right and what’s not and how to rationally analyse the differences. The freedom to express thoughts make kids more analytical and creative in thinking as opposed to kids who’re intellectually policed to a greater extent.

The paranoia of parents about their kids losing track is something that affects a person’s personality significantly. And it is something which cannot be quantified or justified for each person is right in his own terms. Parents cannot be argued into understanding that they should give more freedom to their kids as they might counter it by telling they know their kids better. It’s also this excessive passiveness in seeing their kids be what they envision them to be when they grow up is something which curbs the growth of a kid as a leader. At best this sort of upbringing makes them good employees, but not good ‘born’ innovators. (I am not generalising, there may be many instances of this not happening, but in most cases that I have studied, this is mostly the case). Too much spoon-feeding and raising kids with caution at every step takes the element of confidence out of them and when they grow up, they become too dependant on an external voice to guide them. They start doubting and get apprehensive when a new challenge stands before them.

The other downside of too much parenting is the laziness. When parents or school does everything for a child, naturally the kid doesn’t have anything more to do. They get into that comfort zone and get that sense of cushioning where they know that there will be someone who will take care of the problem and they need not bother too much about it. It grows like a weed and at one point it becomes a person’s greatest enemy. Too much greatness has been sacrificed by the laziness. And it’s very important for parents to know where they should intervene and do something for their children and when to let them handle things on their own.

It’s very important for not just the parents, but also the schools to understand that promoting free thinking in kids is crucial to their future persona. And to an extent the kind of friends a person makes also influences his/her confidence and leadership qualities. It is said, a person is generally an average of 5 of his closest friends. So if the child is in a group that’s generally quiet and un-creative, it’s highly likely that the kid turns up that way. On the other hand, if the group is out-going and curious, the kid will grow up to be one such person.

These are subtle issues. Those that can’t really be quantified and put a finger to. How would we know what kind of people a kid hangs out with? How to know what influences him/her more on an average day? A person has to be lucky that way to get an excellent set of friends and parents, and that’s the reason why we see more employees than entrepreneurs.

I would love to hear others’ opinions on this topic. Feel free to add your thoughts in the comments.

Higher Education 101

One of the most confusing things in the life of a student is the process of applying for higher education abroad. There just isn’t one defined process or a ‘guide book’ to help students research and apply to universities overseas. This confusion makes the perfect hunting ground to the ‘education consultancies’. I have been involved in the process of applying to universities for the last two years and I have experienced a lot of the positive and negative sides of this exercise. While I had no one to guide me, I relied heavily on the internet and even once made a mistake of consulting from one of the million ‘chor’ consultancy businesses to pursue my dream of studying abroad. But fortunately after going through a lot of tough preparation and planning, I managed to get into the university I dreamed of (Not with the help of the consultancies). And trust me, if I could do it, anybody can. Hopefully this blog will help you in your application process. Although this looks like a guide book, this is not. I am just making an attempt to let you know of the basic steps involved. You still must work on your own to finalize and apply to your dream universities.

Step 1: Understand your dream

A master’s degree should be pursued because you’re really ‘passionate’ about the subject. Do not because your parents forced you to do it or because your best friend decided to study and you’ll be left alone here or because someone might offer you dowry (this is the worst reasons of all). A master’s degree is a very focused course and you shouldn’t be doing it unless you are really sure about your future and where your passion lies in. So take your time to realize where your passion lies in, if studying a master’s degree will really help you in your area of interest and the kind of careers would you be later willing to take up after graduating.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve done your bachelors in a subject you’re not interested in and want to pursue master’s in a different subject of your choice. The universities look at your passion and love towards the subject more than anything else. As long as you can convince them with sufficient evidence, you can be an electronics student applying for a master’s course in design or arts. The (education) world is your oyster.

Tip: Once you realize what your dream and passion is, start reading about the subject, the career field etc and start making notes about what inspires you, what is it that you want to do in the field. Daydream a lot and regularly make notes of the same. I will tell you where this becomes useful later.

Step 2: Prepare Early

The process takes an annoyingly long time. There are so many things you must take care of and so many documents to be prepared, it’s advisable to start your preparations early. A safe time to start your preparation is during March-April for the semester starting in Fall of the next year. That means you must start your master’s app process an year and half in advance. For example, if you plan to join the semester starting Fall 2016 (August-September), you must start preparing from March-April 2015.

Step 3: Take the Standardized exams

Universities overseas need Indians to take the IELTS/TOEFL compulsorily while most American universities require the GRE as well.

The IELTS/TOEFL are relatively easier exams and unless English is really hard for you, 15 days of preparation should be enough to get you a score well above the minimum cut-off for any university. In my personal experience I advice you to avoid IELTS as they have a very ridiculous, zero-computer, manual process of sending scores to universities and they’re notoriously inefficient. In my case I received an I-20 that said ‘The student is not proficient in English’ because the British council guys did not send my scores to the university at all. TOEFL scores can be sent to universities online and it’s easy.

If you’re applying to universities in the US then you must take GRE. It is a much harder test, which evaluates your analytical and critical thinking. A solid one month-45 days of minimum prep is needed for this. Take your time, prepare well and take the exam some time around the May-June time frame. So that if in case you don’t get a satisfactory score in the first attempt, you can re-take the exam again with some time to spare.

Step 4: University Research

This is an extremely important step in your application process. There are tons of universities all around the world that teach the subject you’re interested in. And honestly, there is no easy way or a short cut to narrow down on the list of universities. You must do a lot of research online and look for the right university. This is where your googling and networking skills come to use. Check out websites like QZ world rankings, Times higher education, business week, Quora, Linkdin, education forums like Edulix, stupid-sid etc where a lot would be discussed about the universities and subjects. Make a long list of all the universities that offer the course of your choice.

Once you have a big list of universities, start visiting the program website of each university and see the program structure, the research work being carried out, and it’s relevance to your interests. Do not worry if the university is an high ranked university, as long as the program interests you, just have an eye on it. By the end of this process, you should be having anywhere between 8-12 prospective universities that you find very interesting and want to apply to. Again, remember, do not choose a university because a girl you had a crush on studies there or your uncle’s nephew stays in the same town. Focus only on the course.

Make a list of well-distributed list of universities. Do not choose the top 8 universities or 8 completely unheard ones. Have a good mix of highly ranked-moderate-safe universities so that you hedge your chances.

Do not make a ridiculously long list of universities either. Remember each university (Almost all American and some European) has it’s own application fees varying from $60-$120. Keep your budget in mind. Don’t spend all your money on the applications.

Step 5: Preparing the application docs

This is the next hard part. Once you have a list of 6-8 universities, start preparing the documents. Generally the documents needed by most universities are:

• Statement of Purpose (SOP)
• 2-3 Recommendation letters
• Undergraduate transcripts
• Test scores (IELTS/TOELF+GRE)
• CV/Resume
• Additional Requirements

1. SOP: This is the most important document in your application. This is the essay which communicates your interests, passion and career goals to the profs reviewing your application in your absence. This can single-handedly make or break your application in most cases. Start working on your SOP early, possibly by June.

This is where your notes of dreams and ideas will be of help. Start writing a story about how the particular subject inspired you, what work you have done in the subject that merits an admit into a graduate program, what are your future plans and what you intend to do in the chosen field, what made you apply to that particular university and how you’d be contributing to the department through your knowledge. Make a very strong case and write an extremely articulate, to-the-point essay answering all the questions mentioned above. There are many websites and article that tell you more about how to write a good letter of motivation. Just Google.

Every university has its own length requirement for the SOPs. Some have no limit while some have as less as 500 words. Keep the length in mind when you start writing.

Caution: DO NOT COPY others’ SOPs. This can blow your chances like nothing else. Make sure what you write is genuine and your own.

The SOP takes a lot of iterations to be apply-ready. Make a complete draft and have your friends, mentors or anybody who is willing to help you out, review your essay and give constructive feedback on your work. If you do not know anyone, you must look for new people. It’s not hard to find people in the age of Facebook. So do your homework, look for groups, forums, mutual contacts etc and find someone who can help you. If you look hard enough, you WILL surely find someone. Try to write a solid, clearly written, very specific and a convincing SOP.

2. Transcripts: Transcripts contain your undergraduate scores of all the semesters in a single sheet, signed and sealed by the issuing authority. Contact your UG University and get as many transcripts as the number of universities you’re planning to apply. Have an extra copy for your scanning purposes.

3. Recommendation Letters: Most universities need at least 2 recommendations while some may need 3. Get good recommendations from your college professors and a manager or a senior colleague if you’re working in a company.

Note: Do not use a common template with tons of generic praises like ‘he’s one of the most studious person I have come across’ or ‘He completes all his assignments on time’. Although they may be valid, they do not differentiate you from another person who can also claim the same stuff. Identify unique characters in you and write a very specific and informative letter (if you’re asked to write one).

4. CV/Resume: Make a good-looking CV detailing all your educational and professional experiences. Try to show more work done on the subject you intend to study.

5. Test Scores: If you’re taking GRE and TOEFL/IELTS, you can send the scores to 4 universities for free on the day of the exam. So be prepared with the addresses of at least 4 universities you’re sure of applying on the day of the exam. After the exam, you can still the GRE/TOEFL scores online for a fee. For IELTS, you must do a great circus of getting a DD from a bank in the name of ‘The British Council Division’ payable at Chennai, make copies of your Test Report Form(TRF) and your passport, fill a form with the address of every university and courier everything to their Chennai office and pray to god they send the scores. (No guarantee or receipts issued. Yes they’re living in 1920s)

6. Additional Requirements: Some universities/programs may need extra documents. For eg a program in design might want to look at your design portfolio or a PhD program might expect you to upload your research papers etc. Make sure you go through the program website for their requirements carefully before applying.

Step 6: Contact Professors and Alumni

The education system in the west is considerably different than what we’re used to here. So it’s understandable if at some point of time you feel lost. (Happens a lot in fact). Reaching out to people in such cases helps a lot. Look out for professors and alumni from the department and write them emails asking your doubts. In my personal experience, at least 3 out of 10 people will be very glad to help you out with any query you have. So do not hesitate to talk to seniors.

Step 7: Sending Applications

When you have all documents ready, it’s time to start applying. Sign up and log in to the universities’ application portals and start filling in your details. It will take about 45 minutes to an hour max to fill out an application form if everything is ready. However, do not hurry, take your time to fill in the details. You can save the application progress and resume filling the applications at any point of time, so do not fill them in a rush, because the smallest of mistakes can result in your application being rejected.

Also, most universities have an application fee varying from $50-$120. So make sure you do not waste money on applying to all sorts of random universities whose program you’re not sure of. Unless you have an IPL-esque budget, be very sure before hitting that ‘submit’ button.

Remember, you cannot make any changes to the details you have entered after submitting the application. So re-check multiple times after filling out the forms.

Keep an eye on the application deadlines. Each department has it’s own application deadline and you must submit your application before that date. Try to submit your applications as early as you can. It’s always better to apply early and be at the top of the stack as many people start applying around the deadline. The English test and GRE scores can be sent after submitting your applications and sometimes even beyond the application deadline. So do not wait for that.

Step 8: Job Done

Now hope that your efforts will pay off well and get you an admit in the university you really want to get into.

Consultancy Scams

The greatest scams of higher educations are the ‘higher education consultancies’. They are broad daylight robbery agencies that run one of the greatest scamming business in the name of helping students.

When people who do not have information about the universities and don’t know the process of applying approach the consultancies, the first thing they do is scare the shit of out such people. They convince you that the application process is something that cannot be done by yourself and if you try, you will never get an admission. They tell you about how many students from their consultancy have gone overseas and the great amount of help they’ll be doing you with your ‘application process’, ‘SOP’ and ‘Visa interviews’. And for all this, they fleece you an unjustifiable 25k-35k. When you pay them the money, that’s it. You’re forgotten like you’re nobody. They don’t give a rat’s ass about your dreams and passion. They want your money and once they have it, they’ll move on to scam the next student. You will be pulling your hair a week after paying them money. Let me break down their scamming techniques:

1. List of universities: They promise to give you a list of best universities for your profile after you pay the money. They then take your ‘profile’ in a sheet of paper and randomly make a list of 8 universities. This would be pretty much common for every student they ‘help’ regardless of how good or bad the universities are. After all, the poor students won’t know about any of this. When someone does know of a university better than the consultancy shortlists, they go to the extent of discouraging you from applying there saying your ‘profile’ isn’t good enough.

           Fix: There are many websites like Edulix and Stupid Sid which actually take your profile and give you a possible list of universities for free. You can also speak to some seniors and find out the credibility of the department and university when you are unsure. This will actually give you a much cleaner view and options. The consultancy fellows are not subject experts. They do not understand if you’re passionate about computer networks or linear algebra or applied mechanics. All they know is the list of ‘probable’ universities that you ‘can’ apply to with your acads. A big risk IMO.

2. Documents help: They give you a list of documents that you must gather to submit your application, all of which I have mentioned above. Also, you must run around for the documents. They won’t do shit just because you’ve paid them money.

            Fix: Check the university/program website and they would have clearly mentioned the documents needed.

3. LOR and SOP help: This is where they really hurt your chances. They write a generic LOR by replacing some other student’s name with yours and his/her professor’s name with your professor’s name. There won’t be anything that differentiates you or highlights your efforts.

The SOP is a bigger scam. They make you write your SOP. When they have a story long enough for them, they send it to their in-house English expert who then glorifies and beautifies your SOP to unimaginable extents using flowery words and expressions that even Shakespeare himself would cringe to use.

The beautiful SOP might look perfect at first, but this is a deadly mistake. The professors in the universities see hundreds of SOPs every year and they clearly know which is original and which is a fake. If they find out, it won’t take a genius to know what the result of your application decision will be. Especially if you’re applying to a ‘dream’ program/university, this majorly dents your chances. Do not do this. Even if the words aren’t flowery or if you haven’t used fabulous range of vocabulary, keep the essay very specific and have solid content to justify your case. No university would reject an honest and deserving SOP.

4. Filling-the-Application help: Do you think they know your address, UG scores, you parents’ details and your passport details to fill your application form? They don’t. The best they do is telling you “Fill your details. Ask us if you get stuck anywhere”. There is Google. It is free. No thank you.

5. Visa help: If by luck you get an admit, they offer you help with Visa. Again, they make you do all the work, including going to bank, getting affidavits, capability certificates etc. They remotely do none of these things. They can’t even do it if they wanted to. How will they know how much money you have or how you plan to sponsor your education. They simply become your text to speech translators reading and telling you what millions of websites tell you for free. Some even go to the extents of meddling with your bank account by pouring in huge amounts of money temporarily and faking bank manager signatures to get your financial documents ready for Visa. This is extremely dangerous and if caught, you might be permanently blacklisted by the American embassy, which means, say good-bye to your dreams of ever setting foot on American soil.

         Fix: Check out Edulix and other websites. They’re filled with tons of information regarding financing and Visa information and if that confuses you, you can always reach out to one of your seniors or just about anyone studying abroad. Somebody should be able to help you if you ask him or her nicely.

Bottom-line

The consultancies are never an answer to your application process confusion. In fact they should not exist legally or morally. They loot your money and play with your future in the name of getting you an admit in a foreign university. Do not fall prey to their lies and scary/flowery words. In today’s age of the Internet, no information is too far away. If you make a little effort in looking, you will surely find answer to any complex issue. The universities have excellent websites detailing every information applicants need to successfully complete the application. If you still can’t find answers, you can always call the university admission office and get your doubts cleared. The consultancies DO NOT do anything that you cannot do yourself. It’s like paying them money to become your bosses and order around what you must do. And paying them an insane 25k-35k to do that is making a fool out of ourselves. Think about it; is it worth paying someone 25k for (max) an hour’s Googling? Absolutely not. Do not contribute to such scam businesses and worse put your future in the hands of such people.

Applying for master’s programs can be an exhausting exercise. It takes a lot of time and a lot of effort. But if you do it honestly enough, it can be very rewarding in the end. After all, the process of applying, is a part of the education that you will pursue after you go there. If you find this very hard, then you must re-consider your plans and goals. All the best.