User Experience Design

User Experience Design

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User Experience Designer and Usability Expert

Akash Srivastava
UX Designer and Usability Expert

"Interaction design is a science of making technology simpler"
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Profile

Akash Srivastava brings you around eight years of experience. Seasoned Information Architect, Interaction Designer, Usability Expert and manager of user Interface Design, Customer Experience and Documentation teams at corporate like Zeenews, Indiatimes, Timesgroup, ACL Wireless and StudyPlaces Inc.

From last eight years, my work has been evolved around different aspects of design i.e. Information Architecture, Interaction Design, Usability Issues, User’s Experience and Visual Design. My career has been relied on quality experience, self-education, extensive research and development. This not only lends me freedom to formulate new ideas, but it also gives me space to create new descriptions, where I haven't been able to touch base with previous descriptions.

I had worked and with various corporate like ACL Wireless Ltd., Times Group, Indiatimes, Study Places Inc., Zee TV and on products like StudyPlaces.com, Frenzo (Mobile based chat application), Timesjobs.com, Simplymarry.com, Magicbricks.com, Ads2book.com & Shopping.indiatimes.com

• Quality experience in User Experience & Usability
• Creative and insightful, with excellent analytical and communication skills
• Experienced and Technically Astute
• Able to integrate, articulate and motivate across disciplines
• Quality experience in crafting the customer experience
• Offering a unique combination of Business Understanding, Creative Talent & Strategic Insight
• Adaptable and Innovative

Specialities - My USP!!

• Interaction Design
• Information Architect
• Usability
• User Experience Design
• Visual Design
• User Testing
• Design Testing
• User Research
• User Persona
• Cognitive Psychology

Services

• User Research
• User Interview Reports
• User Interview Videos
• User Requirements Evaluation
• User Data Analysis
• Interaction Designing
• Interface Modeling
• Wire-frames
• Design Testing and Evaluation

Contact

• akash.srivastava@gmail.com
• aks@akashsrivastava.com
• Website: www.akashsrivastava.com
  

Creating a Good Interaction Design

Design is all about enhancing the way people work and communicate. Designing interactive product requires considering who is going to use it and how. Think for a moment… how many interactive products you use in a day? Mobile phone, Microwave, Car, ATM, Television. How many products do you like to use which are hard to understand? Now this is where an Interaction designer’s role starts. Interaction designer needs to have an understanding of their business and the requirements of their customers.

The main concern of Interaction designers is to develop interactive products which are usable and easily acceptable by users. To start with we need to identify the weaknesses and strengths of different interactive systems thus we can begin to understand what it means for something to usable or not. Designing usable products thus requires a designer to understand who is going to use it and what will be the use of the product. Another key point is to understand the kind of activities people will do while interacting with the product.

Interaction designer should think around optimizing the user’s interaction with a system, environment or product to match user’s activities. You can also use basic principles of Interaction design and can also involve users to make better choices. This will involve–

• To identify what people are good and bad at,
• Considering what might help people with the way they currently do things,
• Thinking innovative ways to provide quality user experiences,
• Involve users to understand what people,
• Using “tried and tested” user-based techniques.

Essentially, the process of Interaction design involves few basic activities–

• Identifying the needs of users and establishing the requirements,
• Create alternative design meeting those requirements,
• Creating different versions of your design which can be compared and assessed,
• Evaluating what has been designed in effort to meet the requirements.

There are few basic goals of a good design which designers should stick with–

• Effective usage,
• Easy to learn,
• Easy to remember,
• Useful.

AOL's all new look (Avtaar) reminds me of Yahoo

I was browsing internet and thought of going on AOL and It was a big surprise to see AOL's all new look. You can see AOL in a new Avtaar.

Hey... wait a second, I saw this look somewhere earlier too.... let me think... think...
Aah! Anyone can tell, this is almost same as Yahoo! and it is also same in terms of functionalities.



Let me explain 2 - 3 of them -

• Right panel - you can find links for Email, Weather, Radio etc. Take your mouse cursor over any of the link and you will see the same sliding layer as in Yahoo
  
  
• Not only the Ajax effect but links also seems to be same
  

• The left panel contains link same as Yahoo
  
  
• I want to bring your notice one of the button in left panel... "More from AOL" and now see Yahoo's Left panel. You will find the same button on the same place.
  

I have nothing left to say but totally zapped. Please add you comments and share your thoughts on this.

-- Thanks, Akash Srivastava

"Web Browsing through Handheld Media"

Mobiles, PDAs, Palm Tops etc. have been described as the future access devices for the Web browsing. In next few years’ time, there will be more people accessing the Internet via mobile devices than via conventional PCs.

Here is an interesting snippet. Japan had a higher number of mobile internet users than those who used PC to access the web in 2005. According to a white paper by the Japanese government, at the end of 2005, there were 69.2 million people using the Internet from mobile devices, compared to 66 million conventional PC users. The Ministry of Information and Communications' annual "Information and Communications in Japan" white paper said, of these two user groups, 48.6 million use both a mobile device and a conventional PC. This takes Japan total Internet population to 85.3 million users - essentially two in every three people in the country.

In the recent years web is being used for more serious business applications. Mr. Avinash (Manager - Corporate Communication DLF Group) needs access to his official mails anytime and anywhere and feel mobiles and PDAs are good mediums. It is small and easy to carry. WAP sites can serve the information purpose better than conventional PC web access.

In the changing scenario can we depend on conventional ways to access web? Big Giants like Google, Yahoo! are developing their WAP strength to facilitate the users. Do companies restricting themselves to specific mediums can grow further?

-- Thanks, Akash Srivastava

Usability.... Waste or Important?

In the era where technologies are seeking new comforts for consumers/users. Is it worthwhile to design a product without keeping in mind user's acceptance? Is the poorly designed interfaces are the reason why so many products are never used? Will the poorly designed products have any future?

Mr. Gaurav Awasthi, Mass Communication student says - While surfing few shopping and job sites he had a terrible experience to locate the relevant links to manage his account. Are these sites designed in accordance to user's skills, experience and expectations?

The competition is growing rapidly and users are getting more and more options everyday. So in this scenario will the companies giving least priority to user experience can have a wider reach?

Few important factors should be taken care of while designing a new product-

• User has limited short term memory
• User are prone to commit mistakes with complex designs
• Different users have different capabilities and skillsets
  
• Users have different preferences and requirements
  
• There should be minimal surprises for user while using a product
• How the information should be served to users

Some suggestion should be taken care while designing-

• UI design process should involve user analysis, system prototype and evaluation.
• UI prototyping should be a staged process with early paper prototypes.
• Colours should be used sparingly maintaining the consistency.

" If Functionality is what technology do, then INTERFACE is how user interacts with it."

- Thanks, Akash Srivastava