ask me anything - careers · 2018-07-16 · at zeta, we're all a part of ux team. and when we...

ASK ME ANYTHING

QUESTIONS &

ANSWERS

We make sure that the rules of design are broken to create new ones every now and then.

This neccessarily means that we keep innovating and thinking about new concepts. At the

same time, we make sure that we keep inspiring ourselves with weekly sessions to learn

more on different verticals of design. Since the colors that we chose are trendy and modern, it

compliments us well too. Every team in directi does the same. Follow flock and Kapow team

on social media to get to know more about the other design teams.

How the design team(s) at Zeta collaborate with development/Engineering team(s) as a part of design thinking process?

We bring in developers into the design process much earlier to understand what’s feasible

and what’s not. Having a shared vision is essential to any product’s success. More

importantly, both designers and developers work with end users in mind. We also make sure

we are on the same page with respect to naming conventions, sizes, margins, paddings, etc.

What skill should a newbie product designer have?

Design is all about solving problems. A good way to start is by looking through different

mediums - digital products, services that don’t involve technology etc… Depending on what

you like and/or what suits the context, decide on the medium.

You can first start off by trying to understand what the “Design Thinking process” is, you’ll find

tons of resources online about this topic. Then apply the design thinking process and come

up with solutions to the day to day problems that you identify. To start off, you can take any

app / website you like and analyze it critically. Think about why certain things were designed

thew way they are. Check out for problems in the flow (if any) and devise solutions for them.

This will be a good exercise to improve your UX skills

How does Zeta manage to pull off such amazing visual designs? I'm

interested to know about your visual design process, and how did this

culture start? Is it the same in Flock and other Directi products?

talentsocial.flock.comTO PA R T I C I PAT E , V I S I T

2

Given the breadth of work, we mostly don't do hands-on-coding. But, having a basic idea of

coding (HTML, CSS is a must) does help in better collaboration with developers. It's always

helpful to know the technical constraints while designing specific solutions.

Having to work in a big design team must be challenging. How do you decide who works on what?

Zeta is a huge product with solutions for HR, end users and merchants. And within those user

groups we have a set of products and features which each of us own. And we do jump ships

from one product to another when we need a creative break from the ones we own.

What is the standard design process being followed at Zeta?

At Zeta, we're all a part of UX team. And when we say UX, we mean it literally. So apart from

designing workflows and making sure that each and every pixel is executed to perfection, we

also take user research and user feedback very seriously. We regularly talk to our users and

visit our clients to see our product in live action. We also go through the support tickets to see

what are the pain points for our users are.Oh, and internally we have this culture of peer

learning wednesdays where each of us takes a session on something they've learnt or

something they're good at.

Do designer(s) at Zeta code?

3talentsocial.flock.comTO PA R T I C I PAT E , V I S I T

What process do you follow when it comes to product illustrations and how do you tell the story in product illustrations?

We take real life objects as examples when we start with designing illustrations. Then we

make sure that we set a style for the same(this goes through multiple iterations). Once the

style is set, ideas are generated in groups to build the story for the same. Keeping the style

and content consistent are the most important factor.

Can you please elaborate on which user research techniques are employed to understand the user's need?

We apply both quantitative and qualitative user research techniques.

Qualitative research is when we go to the user and take feedback from them in detail, or go to

a corporate where we see users in live action using our product in the right context.

Quantitative being the score we get from various channels like app store ratings and support

ticket ratings.We use both these techniques to guage what user's feel about us, and take the

feedback to go back to the drawing board and rethink those features.

On how many projects does a Zeta designer work parallelly?

Every designer at Zeta work on multiple products at any given point of time. Even if we have

completed our daily tasks we make sure that we keep focussed on learning new things

parallely. This helps us to do our work faster and smarter.

4

How do you choose colors in your website or product design? Which website do you follow to choose color?

We usually get inspired from nature and things around us. The sunrise, sunsets, flora, etc

have such vibrant colors in them, so this becomes a primary source of inspiration for us.

Check this post on instagram for the inspiration that we took for zeta colors - https://

www.instagram.com/p/BKIKAlwjCJI/?taken-by=ramakrishnaux


How do you balance between design which is targeted towards lead generation and still keeps the design good. Because in a design job, it often comes as a requirement to put as much as content as possible in the page by the stakeholders who won't care about UX that much?

Putting a lot of content on the page is easy. Arranging and composing it in the best possible

way and telling your story, well, that is hard. That’s why we as designers have immense

responsibilities on our shoulders. SEO doesn’t necessarily need to translate into bad design.

In fact, SEO is all about gauging a user’s intent and from our experience it is easier to design

for user’s who come(to a website/app) with an intent. Similarly, a lot of content is good too.

Creating content is much harder :)

5

What’s one thing you love and one thing you hate about being a designer at Zeta?

Since Zeta has a pretty stringent process for hiring people, irrespective of their positions,

working with some of the smartest and brightest people across the country becomes one of

the biggest advantage. When it comes to state a disadvantage, one of the most obvious and

probably the most generic is that it might slowly make you live a sedentary lifestyle. Sadly,

when thinking about office work, one tends to think of routine as one of the first associations.

What should we look for when doing user research ?

First, look for the 'right' users ;) By right users, we mean the the target audience you are

catering to. Secondly, make sure you keep your biases away while interviewing users. Be a

good listener & make sure the conversation is friendly(for user interview). Your support team

has a treasure trove of information if you are looking for user painpoints. And, look at the data

to understand user behaviour pattern but always make sure to talk to them to understand the

'why' behind such pattern.


I know it doesn't matter but still I was curious What design tool/tools do you use at Zeta? Are you guys Mac only or shifting to XD/Figma?

Our favorite tool is the ultimate superfast duo called pen and paper :)

For the final execution of design we use Sketch, and yes we all use a Mac. For animations,

its Adobe AE. As of now, we dont plan to move to XD/Figma.

Do a newbie product designer must have their old best graphic or web designing work in their portfolio?

A portfolio should be a reflection of all your thought process and showcasing what you are

good at. Be sure to design a portfolio displaying works related to the role for which will be a

right fit. Also, quality is important rather than the quantity of work you are showcasing.

I see a lot of nice animations in your dribble page, which are great to look at. While designing a product or feature, how do you decide how much animation is too much animation? How do you decide

Micro interactions is what we focus on for the product. This adds the delighter feel to the user

who uses zeta on a day to day basis. Sometimes the product flows become too lengthy for a

user to understand and it could be a business requirement. In situations like these, we make

sure to add subtle animations to keep the user on a happy mode throughout the entire flow.

We all know design is all about OK, GOOD & WOW. How do you decide between GOOD & WOW?

Good design is extremely functional, clean and needs extremely less cognitive effort to

understand whats happening, good design is something that even your grandpa will

understand, think good design as a highly functional german engineered Volkwagen car.

Wow design is a BMW 7 series, apart from being extremely functional, they're beautiful,

classily executed, and give an emotion of delight to the user.

How design team serve to globally by time? I mean 24hr team

available?

We have few nightowls in the team to ensure that we are always available for the team. But

this doesn’t mean that we need to be available globally since we now cater to only India.

How many projects should be there in a new product

designer?

Ideally, having 6-8 projects in your portfolio help. Your portfolio should cater more towards

the role you are looking for. That shows your depth in that particular domain. At the same

time, you need to show the breadth of your work which you could do by showing work from

related fields. Being a 'T-shaped designer' is what you should be aiming for. And, don't be

shy to show failed projects but make sure you mention the learnings from those :)


Who has the final say on design like who decide what gets shipped?

Design being a collaborative process, needs more hands to work on solutions. This being

said, we get the consent from the entire design team and from the engineering team to

understand what is feasible and what is not.

Where is the design team at Zeta strongest? Weakest?

We are a all hybrid design team where every member in the team is skilled at atleast 3-4

verticals of design. So that’s obviously our strongest point since one single person can

handle it when the whole team isn’t available. We never say no to design requests from any

team(HR, marketing, sales, talent, etc) in our company and even for wedding invite

requests :P. So this definitely is our weakest point - "We never say NO”.

What are the key visual elements to be considered while doing illustrations?

For illustrations we consider elements like colour, shape and balance. What's more

important is the message you're trying to convey through the illustration. We have

developed presets of various illustrations according to our brand styleguide which we iterate

and use it to convey the message according to the context.

What part of the design process does the team spend the most time on?

In any project the most crucial part is having the expectations clear with all the stakeholders

within the company, there's no point in designing a feature which is impossible to execute

by the engineers in the stipulated timeline. So for any feature, we spend most of the time

doing quick mockups on paper or greyscale mockups and constantly sync with the

developer and product managers to be on the same page and make sure we are solving the

right problem. Once we have the direction frozen, we have enough firepower to execute it to

perfection in record time! :D


How do you see design team growing by both quality & quantity?

By practising design more, you get faster at your work. And by taking up new challenges you

become smarter at your work. So both quantity and quality are achieved by solving more

problems in your leisure time.

Do you think shaping the design team in a studio/agency way of

working helps in improving the quality of work?

It depends on the type of work you do in the studio/agency. The good part of Agency Model

is the multiple verticals you get to work on. Your breadth of skills improve pretty well if you

work on multiple projects from different genres. On the flip-side, you don't get to work on the

complete product cycle. Design,being an iterative process, is never completely finished.

That's something you will learn a lot better in a Product-based company compared to

Agency. Both the skills being necessary, it's completely upto you to choose based on your

preference.

Is the UX design process differs in a Product company than any IT company?

In an IT company(Services/Agency) you will get to work on a great breadth of projects.

However, in terms of design, you are just scratching the tip of the iceberg. Working in a

Product company requires you to challenge and validate your assumptions over and over

again and get deep into the problem you’re solving. Also, you get to work on the complete

product lifecycle. So, take your pick ;)

What traits make someone successful in Zeta Design team?

“To create great designs” is not enough. A good designer will be able to articulate how their

designs communicate your brand’s vision and solve practical problems. And that's what we

appreciate the most!


Having to work in a big design team must be challenging. How do you decide who works on what?

We are a 10 member design team where everyone's opinion matters equally. The product

offerings we have is huge and we make sure that we assign ourselves to the ones that we

know that we can add enough value. At the same time for unassigned tasks we huddle up

and decide the member who is willing to pick it up. And since we all are hybrid, we don’t

depend on others for designs but only for feedback and iterations.

Do you guys follow the principles of animation to give it a natural feeling? How do you ideate for any animation/microinteraction? Any particular source for inspirations? Or is it hit and trial?

Yeah, there are many sources for the 'standards' that you can find online. One of our in-house

designers have done a detailed research for a talk on UX Choreography. You can go through

that for a quick summary :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qpz5jpRnEho&t=817s

The key is to mimic the real life motion of physical things around. Regarding ideation, we keep

our eyes, ears and (most importantly) mind open all the time :) Later, we try and relate our

microinteractions and animations with them.

For amateur designers, what other websites would you recommend for creating designs besides Canva?

To start off with design, it is always good to use pencil and paper for ideation. If you want to

get a digital shareable version of the same, use mockflow.com or wireframe.cc to get started

with a simple design workflow and low fidelity mockups. As you grow, you can get started

with tools like Adobe XD and Figma. Canva is a mix of all these tools with many free design

templates. We would suggest you to do it from scratch by taking inspirations instead of

designing in Canva.


What is the vision and/or mission of Zeta for the next 2 years? For the next 5 years?

We target to solve the problem of corporate benefits with the best customer experience

possible. We also aim to integrate with the multiple banks to scale ourselves. The other

visions can't be shared here due to confidentiality :)

Do use any AI technique to get some unique design like we have generative adversial networks to generate very unique and unimaginable animations by are you using some kind of that. how does directi uses state of the art AI technique for there improvements in graphics design or any other products.

You must have heard of "The Grid" a few years ago, a website development and design

system (Squarespace) powered by AI where the site components and other interaction

patterns design themselves, without the need of a designer. But according to the sources,

this was a disaster. When you think about design, things are more complex than what AI

can do. Humans have a unique capability to create empathy for users. So we won't be

exploring AI, at least not in the near future.


What kind of advice would like to give to a newbie product designer?

A good way to nurture the interest in design is by trying to solve problems in day to day life.

You could be solving problems through different mediums - digital products, services that

don’t involve technology etc… Depending on what you like and/or what suits the context,

decide on the medium. You can first start off by trying to understand what the “Design

Thinking process” is, you’ll find tons of resources online about this topic. Then apply the

design thinking process and come up with solutions to the day to day problems that you

identify.


How can a graphic designer convert his/her career to product designer?

There are many stages of product design. Right from chalking out an idea in your mind, to

making beautiful visuals - everything pretty much falls under the hood of Product Design. As

a designer, you may choose to draw your line wherever you wish to. Graphic design is a

subset of product design. In addition to conceptualising and designing screens, Product

Designers also brainstorm on how to make the user 'feel' good while he/she is using the

product. There are many ways of making a user feel good. A simple illustration, nice

colours, witty copy, funny animation, automated steps and fast loading are just a few of

them. The challenging part is the ability to decide on the best thing to do in a particular

situation.. I'd suggest you start making some personal projects which have end to end

design flows, and face the challenges where you need to figure out the trade-offs. Also I'd

suggest that you start reading books like: Design of everyday things (this is a designer's

bible), Elements of form, Psychology of Persuasion, Designing with the Mind in Mind, Dont

make me think, and Badass: Making users awesome.

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ask me anything - careers · 2018-07-16 · at zeta, we're all a part of ux team. and when we...

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