design, UX

The UX oxymoron at work

I remember reading a LinkedIn post a few years ago when Regnard Raquedan raised this question if agile UX is an oxymoron. Earlier this year, I got a chance to see UX oxymoron live at work in India. A leading UX conferenc...

content design, design, leadership, product content strategy, UX, UX writing

We need to revisit the role of Chief Content Officer (CCO)

A CCO will make sure that fixing content means identifying the gap or the opportunity in the system first....

design, leadership, product content strategy, UX

The State of Design—my essay in a publication

We need to position our design judgment better. For being a part of the design food chain—as producers and as consumers....

product management

A guide to Product Management interview questions—A guest post by Laura Richards

It is also important to familiarise yourself with common interview techniques such as STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result)....

leadership, System thinking

The Tata Memorial Homi Bhabha Cancer Hospital, New Chandigarh—My Experiences, Part I

They maintain a very high-degree of patient-centricity, compassion, and proactive caregiving vibes throughout the hierarchy of healthcare operations....

leadership, System thinking

The inheritance of inequality—Using ‘Last drawn salary’ for hiring

Recently, I have seen how organizations set up or negotiate salaries while hiring candidates. One of the common criteria that an organization uses to negotiate salary is the candidate’s last drawn salary. I ha...

content design, design, UX, UX writing

The lifecycle of an interaction—in content and design

An interaction does not exist in a single interaction—and an interaction's lifecycle is greater than the sum of all the interactions' taken together for a single story....

content design, design, product management, products

The intersections in our digital work

When we work in content or design, we enable the work of almost all other teams in the organization even more than our own work. ...

content design, System thinking, UX

Content design and strategy, and system thinking

Ever since I started exploring system thinking and its role in digital product processes, my mind often thinks about content’s role in systems and systems’ role in content strategy. This is not as complicated...

content design, products

Content’s role in the business model canvas design

For example when they write value proposition, there is a risk that the message or the vocabulary in this canvas stays in the teams' minds. ...

design

A four weeks break in writing

We are about to enter the festival season here in India, and I am taking a break from writing posts on this website for four weeks....

design

AI in civic technology—The Atlas of Urban AI, by CIDOB

For example if you click on Helsinki on the map, the AI projects' details in the city show up....

design

Outcome 2023 in Chandigarh—UX and design, product leadership, content design and strategy

I cannot imagine that we can discuss design in any other city that is better than Chandigarh....

design

The UX of sound

Tom Ridley shared a few interesting methods and techniques to plan the design of sound....

design

The pandemic parenting

My eight years old son felt that dad is faster than Google search....

design

Content design for interaction design

Content design makes the interaction design far more useful and relevant to everyone....

design

The next in technology—Synthesis

If we have questions on DALL-E's capabilities, and regardless of how such technologies advance towards the validated use cases for the great good of the life on planet, synthesis search is the future....

design

What is marketing without content strategy?

Marketers often design poor landing pages....

design

The food vibes

“I just design based on my instinct. The specifications give me the goals but these cannot guide me how to design,” said a designer in our product team meeting. It was in the year 2015, and I am just guessing...

design

In recession, content is often saving itself

Part of the problem is the content itself because we continue speaking in the language of our role in product and organization....

design

Our intelligence

It needs some intelligence to ask questions from those who are intelligent....

design

On learning UX

One of my friends is a UI engineer and he asked me one day—”Can you teach me UX design?” It made me think of what I should teach him. If I ever plan to run a coaching program for beginners to help them lear...

design

My first experience in product marketing

Product marketing is nicely poised on the intersection of marketing, product, and content strategy....

design

The slides from my talk at the OmnichannelX 2022—content and design systems

I call these as the defensive metrics because none of these metrics really help us know about their contribution to the product success—for the product metrics....

design

Our American English

One of my clients told me that my English language was not good for the American English standards....

design

Sometimes, alignment is overrated in product teams

When we talk about alignment, the need for alignment has moved its needle—from the outcomes to the foundations....

work

My Wordle practices

When NYT took over Wordle, I tweeted a dialogue between two NYT reporters....

design, leadership, products, UX

Design survives and thrives in spite of the culture

Culture is more of the sentiment that shows up in the moments....

content design, product content strategy, UX writing

A content design and UX writing assignment for your self-practice—part 3 (free)

Define the content success criteria and then assign the score to each piece of content that you wrote for the product stories....

content design, design, product sense, products, UX

The corridor in the UX and design

This is why I say that innovation is overrated in product strategy and in the design....

content design, design, product content strategy, UX writing

A content design and UX writing assignment for your self-practice—part 2 (free)

For the content design and UX Writing assignment, use these user research insights to write the user stories or job stories, and design three content mockups....

design, leadership, products

My data is my data even without any engagement or interactions on my data

I am interested to know what happens to my data in the organization beyond what they have mentioned in their data privacy policy....

content design, UX writing

A content design and UX writing assignment for your self-practice—part 1 (free)

A small assignment where you can apply your content design and UX Writing skills for self-practice....

design, leadership, work

Collective and multi-dimensional intelligence for a collective system leadership

Our challenges have only got more complicated which means that we need more system leaders now, and quickly....

content design, design, product content strategy, products

Content principles and product principles

The goal of a content system is to set up this alignment between product principles and the content principles....

design, design and content systems, product content strategy, products

Forests technology—analytics intelligence for sustainability and conservation

Collective Crunch is a startup in Finland who is rethinking forests with AI for a data-driven forests ownership....

content design, design, product content strategy

Content management for NFTs—a superb talk by Josh Anderson

Josh explains the structure of an NFT in terms of contract and metadata which makes it directly reference-able to the language of structured content. ...

work

Vacations time—taking a break from writing

I have been writing four posts in a week—Monday to Thursday. Since we have summer vacations here in North India, our family is planning a road trip to the hills somewhere in Himachal Pradesh. I will resume writing on 2...

products, work

All products’ impact on society is the same

The impact of our work is not about the domain or size of the organization—to book a cab or to be able to close a deal in the CRM....

content design, product content strategy, tools, work

Writer—for content intelligence in content operations

Writer helps you design the foundations of the collective intelligence of the content team....

design, products, UX, work

No Tobacco Day—the passive smoking in our digital products

They smoke while designing it and the interface retains the traces of that smoke....

content design, design, leadership, products, UX

Design and content education

We cannot always imagine what the customers go through for not being able to complete the transaction....

content design, product content strategy, products, UX

cricinfo adapts itself for new content types—but where is content model?

The product team's understanding and knowledge of data models could have just killed the user experience....

design, leadership

The design value framework, by Design Council’s flagship research

The design value framework talks about the design practices' adoption or how the orgs respond with time, for the four key factors—sociocultural, environment, democratic, and financial-economic....

design, leadership, UX

Design—Organization before the product

Design education should include studying organization behavior or even organization redesign too....

product management, products

You cannot learn product management without practice

The Twitter wisdom excites us, it gives us confidence....

products, work

Why not

My "Why not" is one of the ways to build those conversations....

design, leadership

Design contributing to product is different from design reporting to product

'Report to' smells of hierarchy which is not always desirable. ...

products, work

10 percent better technology leverage quarterly = 46 percent increased effectiveness

I am yet to hear many stories where people quit their work because technology could not solve it....

content design, product content strategy, UX

What is content experience

Content experience is also about what makes the message and the brand memorable....

content design, design, products, UX

For the design food chain

If business argues for how and why of a message or an extra field on the sign up form and if it asks design to justify, this is not how design works....

content design, product management, UX

A product manager role I wish I could have

I get a feeling that it should be an interesting challenge to simplify how Miro pricing works at present....

leadership

Pay equity and the cost of living index

The organization is paying them for the work, and not for the cost of construction of their houses or for their food in their country....

content design, design, product content strategy, products, UX

On content principles—part 1

I believe that you cannot frame the content principles without a reference to the product principles or design principles....

leadership, product management

Products management—products, business, and organization

In bigger companies, the role is divided in multiple units for strategic, managerial, and functional....

work

Very small fiction—A leaf in Ukraine

Once I saw them hosting a workshop on DE&I under the same tree. It shows that we had common roots somewhere....

leadership, UX

What happens to the user research data—Do you have a data lifecycle framework

Defining data ownership at different stages in the research data lifecycle is part of content governance. ...

design, product content strategy, product sense, products, SaaS

We need content and design systems that support product metrics

Design systems are around us for a few years now, which means that we are beginning to see talks on the future of design systems....

Uncategorized

European universities programs and courses—Design without content

The universities can do a huge favor to the industry by preparing multi-dimensional talent pool for our digital work....

design, products

On design roadmaps and product roadmaps

If a design roadmap's goal or the expected outcome is a product (or multiple products), do we call it a design roadmap?...

content design, leadership, product management, System thinking, UX writing

The cost of delay in our learning models—A product content strategy and design course, part 2

If we apply the Cost of Delay in how we identify our core capabilities, our career path discussions might look a lot different....

work

Getting started in a new product team as an independent

It is a good idea to sense their priorities and concerns—to understand what builds their momentum. ...

leadership, product management, System thinking, work

Inspiring leaders need learning teams to support the organization goals

Organizations should provide the incentives to the teams for their curiosity and not for the work....

products, UX

Rebranding is not a design project, it is a communication project

In every sense, rebranding is a communication project. The creatives are derived from this communication....

Uncategorized

School uniform, for students or templates?

We need to design their learning experience beyond the Figma'ed shirts and trousers. ...

content design, design, product content strategy, UX writing

Interaction design and the content hierarchy

Stripe is another example of beautifully designed interactions for the customers' hierarchy of content needs on the interface....

product sense, UX

The product sense in design

Designers do not understand how their design work impacts the product's unit economics directly....

content design, product content strategy, System thinking, UX writing

A product content strategy and design course that strengthens our learning and working models—Part I

This content strategy and content design course helps you understand how we work, and how we work on our practices, habits, and working models....

content design, product content strategy, UX

Content utility in content strategy and design

Users care for content utility more than the content usability....

civic tech, leadership, product content strategy

IFTF’s playbook for ethical technology governance in public sector

Content governance plays an important part of an organization's content strategy, and a set of checks and practices on ethical content can make it to their content governance plans....

content design, product content strategy, Product marketing

How product content strategy informs product marketing for sales enablement

Since product content is foundational to the design and UX and since design is sales-enablement, there is no better alliance than product content strategists working with product marketers....

UX writing

To caution and to relax them: A very small UX writing challenge

Make sure that user reads the message but stays calm...

leadership, product management

Content leadership is about building the confidence

As content and design leaders, we are often weighing the trade-offs....

civic tech, product content strategy, System thinking

Libraries as the infrastructure for content strategy in civic tech

In civic tech data production supply chain, civic content strategy plays a huge role in working with policy framers to establish the standards, structure, and data governance models....

content design, product content strategy, UX

Sometimes, customer journey and the user goals are overrated—content strategy comes to the rescue

Content strategy helps you plan for the customer's intent and their hidden goals for specific moments too, and not only for their ultimate goal....

content design, design, product content strategy

Our job in content strategy and content design is a technical job

Technology is not in loops, technology is what makes a logic loop work and what makes the loop usable, scaleable....

design, System thinking

Finding the Bhalku Ram in our systems—the Kalka-Shimla Railway project reference

We need to keep an eye on the Bhalku Rams in the periphery of our systems. ...

content design, design, product content strategy

Content types for modern interface—a hierarchy of interactions, integrations, intersections

Many modern products build content interface on top of content types because either the consumers' interaction models are complex or the use cases are highly audience-centric....

design, product content strategy

What surprises us in our technology work

I underestimated the role of domain expertise in technology work....

product content strategy, Product marketing, SaaS, UX

What is product content strategy, how it helps a product

Product content strategy is such an exciting intersection of product marketing, product onboarding, content design, and brand positioning....

design and content systems, System thinking, UX

Adding the system in a design system

For example, if I use a component A, does it advise me or caution me that I might need to use B too because there is a context....

product content strategy, System thinking, UX

How product content strategy can help a product respond to a crisis

My mind would be busy to do something, I will be happy if something validates it and stops me....

design, leadership, UX

Design is secondary in the design-driven organizations

If we take design-driven to be the default, we might see the bigger picture a lot more clearly....

design, product content strategy, product management, UX

What is your dream design team?

Designing a team is about selecting people in specific roles and how they can work together....

content design, design

Content designers bring a multi-dimensional product wisdom in the team

Content designers do not only write and publish content, they build products. They build businesses....

Uncategorized

On my 46th birthday today—my East, wallet, and the pretense

If 44 was a turn on, 46 is about the momentum....

design, UX writing

Getting started on a UX writing project

Planning it for the brand message, for the holistic customer journey, for edge cases, and for the forms....

leadership

How schools have adapted to teaching online, and what is missing

The schools have adapted to online teaching experience, they need to elevate the process for a more students-centric teaching model....

content design, product content strategy, System thinking, UX

A systems-driven content supply chain is the life blood of customer experience

After working with many product teams worldwide as a content strategist or design lead, or sometimes as a product manager for smaller teams, I realize that I was working with them without a title....

content design, UX writing

Getting hired as a UX writer

Designing a UX Writing portfolio that invites attention because it is personalized for your work experience....

content design, design, product content strategy, product management, Product marketing, SaaS, UX

26 Examples of how Common Sense Business tops AI, ML, GPT-3

Lockdown gave me a chance to throw a net in the tech ocean, and here is a quick list of plastic bottles that add to the massive tech debt in the world....

product management, Uncategorized

A product hires people

Managers hire people to work on a product. Ever wonder how a product might want to hire people?...

content design, product sense, UX, UX writing

Hey.com! Where is the design?

We see more stories for why Hey may not work than why Hey might work, but I have different reasons for not using Hey....

design, Product marketing, UX

Code. To Design. To Narrative.

We have a Github for code and a Figma for design. Do we have such a decentralized way to design the narrative?...