Design, Event

Sketchnoting @DesignUp22

Last week I had the greatest pleasure of attending DesignUp 2022, the first in-person Design conference in India in 2.5 years. As always, DesignUp has a high bar for quality and this time also it did not disappoint. There were wonderful talks by the speakers and unconference events.

Here are some of my sketchnotes from the conference:

It started with an insightful talk by Nav Pawera on Design in Agriculture

I loved how Nav’s talk took us on their journey of research and design, as the team figured out the relationship farmers had with tech, the role that ground agents (Sahabat Jiva’s) played in their research, evolving the co-creation sessions, and finally at the end of the first year, that the team learnt to get over their own biases as designers! Such a huge learning, that shows amazing self awareness as a team.

Graphic designer and illustrator Kriti Monga shared her insights from living a designer’s life, around the themes of craft, curiosity, courage and living a creative life

Her projects showed how she leans into using her hands and the physical experience to guide her toward exploring ideas further into experience beyond the visual.

Krish Ashok‘s talk on Strategic Laziness was funny and clever.

Writer and designer Lauren Celenza‘s talk spoke truth to some uncomfortable topics we never articulate, about being designers in tech. Her thoughtful and insightful talk resonated with me and the experiences I’ve had in my career in multiple ways.

This quick sketchnote below was for the panel discussion on Design for Bharat moderated by Suresh Venkat.

The second day started with a talk on music and structure by musicians and designers Drupad and Neeraj Mistry. A lovely zen-like beginning to the Sunday morning. Unfortunately, my iPad gave up and I had to draw on paper.

Anek: Design in Diverse Societies by Prof Girish Dalvi was phenomenal, and deservedly got a standing ovation from the audience. Civic signage in India include multiple languages – but English always stands out. Girish informs us that it is because the Indian language typefaces have not been properly designed to scale. As he led us through their process & journey, we learnt about type forms and the craft beyond the digital that is needed. Thanks to their type foundry Ek Type, open sourced via Google Fonts, we now have these ubiquitous typefaces used from signage to media to even WhatsApp forwards!

My friend Ayaz Basrai of The Busride Labs shared their work on the India Futures Project, a speculative design project on the future of India around multiple themes. It was marvelous, challenging our current perspectives with dark visualizations laced with humor. Like a Powers of Ten, it took us to the hive mind of bees and zoomed out through the talk to the overview effect experienced by astronauts in space…

I missed a bunch of talks in the middle, for example my friend Ashish Goel’s talk on courage, Meeta Malhotra’s talk on getting designers a seat at the table, as I was prepping for my own talk on looking for Creative Joy at work. Here’s Rasagy, Meera Sapra and Manali Mitra sharing their captures of my talk.

Designer Ruchita Madhok shared lovely stories about stumbling upon design history 😛 and turning inspirations into passion projects.

During the event, I also helped out with the Unconference events, Sketchnoting with Rasagy and Storytelling with Suresh Venkat, learning as much as we shared, and being totally blown away by the creativity of the participants.

I had forgotten how wonderful and inspiring conferences can be, and DesignUp recreated all that magic all over again, a passion project by designers for designers. A big shoutout to the volunteer team (in which I play a bit part), led by Jay, Shiva, and Narayan.

To see more coverage head over to the DesignUpConf Twitter page.

art, Books, illustration, Life, List, sketchbook

My best books of 2021

Last year I didn’t read as much as I usually do, what with one thing and another, but I ended up with some good ones. Here are the highlights.

Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman: Recommended by pacificleo, it was one of my best books of the year.

Voices of Dissent by Romila Thapar: This essay puts today’s responses to resistance in perspective, by charting out the history and evolution of dissent from the vedic times. A worthwhile read, even though the language was quite academic. (If you buy from Seagull, you can choose your version of the cover, designed by the brilliant sunandinibee.)

Among graphic novels, I read some beauties: Japanese Notebooks: A Journey to the Empire of Signs by Igort, The Winter of the Cartoonists by Paco Roca, Hostage by Guy Delisle, Leonard Cohen: On a Wire by Pilippe Girard and some more that I shared in Graphic novels by women.

Last year I also updated my perspective on feminism with We should all be Feminists by Chimananda Ngozi Adichie and Against White Feminism by Rafia Zakaria.

Some other books that I enjoyed were Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency by Olivia Laing, Daybook by Anne Pruitt and The Pursuit of Art by Martin Gayford.

In fiction The Startup Wife by Tahmina Anam was enjoyable and different, as was Crudo by Olivia Laing and No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood.

Our best pastime was drawing with Making Comics by Lynda Barry that Guto and I used throughout the year.

I thought I hadn’t read much, but now I’m getting tired just looking at this list. Oh well, life is short, and my eyes won’t last.

Design, Event, sketchbook

At DesignUp19

I just came back from DesignUp 2019 which isn’t just a design conference, it’s made by designers for designers. This year it was bigger and better than ever. In the conference lineup there was a mix of data+design, the pluralities that exist in India with design for the social sector, design leadership and a number of varied workshops. Here are the sketchnotes of the talks I attended:

Jon Kolko: Creativity

Jon talked about four ways in which design leaders can help to enhance creativity of their teams – to acknowledge feelings, tame ambiguity, drive a vision and let teams run wild. For example, designers feel vulnerable when putting up their work for a critique, so respect and acknowledge that. In a critique, he said, there should be no hierarchy. The highest paid person in the room is equal to everyone else, it should be a democratic process so foster trust. Another aspect of a design leadership is to set a vision – frame the problem and humanize it.

“Show the team why there’s a reason to believe. Bring the design criteria to life.”

Dave Malouf: Design Ops – The power to amplify design value

Dave’s talk finally gave me a name to some of the activities I’ve been engaged in over 2019 – hiring and setting up the design team and the comms for Microsoft Edge Design in India. For a long time, until I heard from Dave, I didn’t really think I was doing real “design” – but I realized after this talk, that I was setting the foundation for the team now to start performing at their best.

Design Ops basically creates time for design teams by streamlining effort and communication, to focus and put their best energy on the most creative aspects of the work. For scaling a design team and ensuring a quality practice that creates quality experiences, design ops is a must. Dave’s talk focused on principles and values to guide with.

“So that we mutually understand and value what is quality design output, AND quality practice is. Design Ops carries the burden.”

Socialise design quality
Quantify it
Critical design language
Monitor to learn and adjust

The design process (and proud to say we use the shiny double diamond in our team) that helps to explore multiple approaches:

Dave also explained how should design teams use quantitative and qualitative data:

Methods for collecting the right data as part of the design process
Instrumentation to be built in to capture the right data
Dashboards to turn data into insights

BTW, Dave founded the ixda – and that’s where I learnt how to be an interaction designer way back in 2004…

Andy Budd: An accidental design leader

I had been reading Andy’s blog since 2004, and he was one of the early designers, and his talk was about the roles and responsibilities of design leaders.

An absolutely fantastic talk that made we wish I had a design mentor back when I was struggling to understand how to lead design teams. Now after 5 years or so, I may have learnt all these, only with a few battle scars and heart burn.

Andy talked about 5 things: Hiring the right designers for your team, retaining them and helping them stay creative, giving them the space to thrive and managing up and down.

“Give your team the air cover to support learning and growth.”

For more guidelines visit his site Clearleft.

Panel: Roti, Kapda or Mobile

This panel, moderated by Ripul Kumar was about how Indians are changing as a result of their high mobile usage.

People will find a digital consumption equilibrium.”
Navneet Nair of Phonepe

“People expect pleasure out of productivity.”
Payal Arora, author of The Next Billion Users

Payal Arora: Design for the next billion users

Payal spoke about the 5 needs of the next billion users: Fun, Flexibility, Family, Fusion and Friction, and the need to understand the nuances of contexts.

“We need friction to protect people from themselves – to provide a pause before action.”

Design for Social Good: Devika Krishnan – Akshay Roongta

We are “maker-centric not market-centric” no matter what the project brief or design process is!

Devangana Khokhar: Data for Social Good

Arindam Mukherjee: Insights for Product Development

Another awesome talk which I couldn’t draw – because my pen had run out of ink – was “Design Leadership without losing your hair” by Param Venkataraman.

“The higher you go, the deeper you need to look.”

What was nice was that lots of speakers recommended books like Orbiting the giant hairball, Design the life you love, etc. There were so many more talks that were happening in parallel that I missed, including Alyssa Naples’s talk. It was really difficult to be at each of them. Plus there were all the wonderful conversations that happened at the edges of the conference.

The Microsoft Edge designers getting their books signed by Jon Kolko

All in all, a great conference – lots of validation, new learning, new ideas and new people to connect with! Looking forward to the next!

sketchbook, travels

Listening while flying

During a recent flight I was listening to a couple of my regular podcasts The Knowledge Project and The Tim Ferris Show. These podcasts represent two different aspects of work/life for me: The Knowledge Project is a podcast that usually provides a new perspective to knowledge and learning concepts, and helps me understand different/difficult ideas. The Tim Ferris show is a great mix of tactical and inspirational, and usually themes I go through in my day to day work/life.

This drawing is Shane Parrish talking to Jason Fried of 37 Signals. I’ve used 37signals’ (now called Basecamp) flagship productBasecamp at work and been an avid reader of their blog since my early days as a designer, and usually find them to have a unique perspective on things.

“Always figure out what’s the right thing, even if you don’t do it.”

Personally this attitude to company building and creating sustainable team culture was really eye-opening for me.

And then I listened to Tim Ferris talking to Debbie Millman: Busy is a decision. What really stood out for me was the focus on prioritization, always my weakness.

“Make the time to do the things you want to do, and then follow through and do them.”

This is her advice to young designers starting out:

Am I constantly refining and improving my skills? What can I continue to get better at? Do I believe that I am working hard enough? If not what should I be doing in order to succeed? She says you should have a point of view and share it respectfully.

Event, sketchbook

Bonus: Sketchnotes, here and there

So, having artists sketch at conferences have become a cool thing these days. I was asked to do some for a company’s employee meeting last year.

I really like this page: Swarn Sehgal was talking about the effort we need to put in to meet our aspirations. One of the key takeaways was to be proactive, especially for companies, instead of waiting for a crisis to bring about the change.

And this was Ian Herman talking about how they made the brand come together.

Oh and I forgot to mention, but last year my “sketchnotes” were featured on Kyoorius’s website. Here’s the link: http://kyoorius.com/2013/08/sketchnotes-soo-basu/

As I mentioned earlier, I attended this conference. Here are some sketches from it.