I’ve done a few in Mexico working with students are various universities. Always a blast.

Go find my page on Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Joe-Fletcher/113096605392439

One misconception I see across all cultures is the confusion between goodness/greatness and perfection. Note that Joe didn’t use “perfect” anywhere in his article, yet a typical response (from anywhere, not just the comments) is effectively “we can’t afford perfection, so you’ll have to settle for whatever we give you.” This is an example of Voltaire’s classic “The best is the enemy of the good”, where the inability to be perfect is used as an excuse to not do anything at all.

Training is the best solution to this problem because it’s impractical to learn UX design through “trial and error” on the job. Having formal UX design training certainly helps, but that’s not a practical solution for most professionals. As it happens, I’m now in the UX design training business (http://www.uxdesignedge.com). I have a three-day UX Design Essentials course for people who don’t have a design background. It sounds like there should be a great opportunity to offer such a class in India and China, especially to those managers who aren’t leading their teams well. Does anyone have any thoughts on how I might be able to offer my training courses abroad? If so, please share (you can contact me directly though my website).

I’ve also heard similar issues with schools not focusing on process as much. I hope as the design culture in India grows, that changes. I’m sure it will over time just as the US has [and continues to change and grow]. I’m hoping to visit NID or another school next time I’m in India to really get a sense of how the schools differ from US design schools. Of course each school is different, but even one visit could help broaden my views.

Nice article. Adding to what Sameer, Jhumkee, Kshitiz and other Indian designers have written…

I think a lot of knowledge about – attention to details and why details are important- comes when you work throughout the product lifecycle and work closely with usability testing and engineering groups in the last stages of the product.

It is a different thing to make assets on Photoshop and wireframe interactions. To become sensitive to detailing, and to know what all things to include in a spec document (for lets say a very small screen phone) – you have to be where the action is. You have to see the chaos, the screw-up, and feel the pain the product went through when the engineering group found a detail missing and the engineers ‘designed’ that interaction on the fly.

More often than not, Indian UX groups work as consultants for a very specific part in the product and the requirements are handed over by home-UX group in UK or US.

Sometimes it is also about resources & budgets !
When I was attending design school in India, I did a summer of research in Germany.
At that time my research project was NFC and RFID communications, as usual we made beautiful posters and made wireframes etc. but we didn’t have the actual devices to build software and test it out. When I went to Germany I saw a similar project in the lab, but in this case the students had the budget and resources to build it out, test and refine it and were now working on the finer details like positioning the service, after sales, customer-care systems, news-letter design etc.

Having said all this, I am happy that things are changing fast thanks to a lot of Indian home bred start-ups where engineering and design both happens in India. These start-ups are mostly web products – companies who know that they produce in India but sell to a world-wide audience. To sell well must get the design and details right.
Zoho CRM is a very good example of ‘made in India.’

Another interesting aspect, I have seen in these start-ups is, they don’t have the resources but want to produce the best. So they do lightweight design research and testing. They interview people on the phone, designer sits beside a developer, and they thrash out the details on code and design together. Indians are pretty good at this , with the cultural shortage of resources, we know how to get more done with less resources.

As for design education in India, I think there is not enough focus on implementation and detailing when it comes to software UX. Design schools are happy to have their students make beautiful posters and wireframes and explain a concept. I would like to see more focus on prototyping ( whether it be flash or paper or actual HTML , code) and building the actual working thing and then testing it out.

About me: I studied design in India at IIT Guwahati http://www.iitg.ac.in/design/about.htm, then
have worked with some exciting start ups in India and am now working in UK.

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Hey Kshitiz,
Happy you read the article and have some points to debate It’s how I learn more about the situation and how to approach it.

This point “Creativity is hampered when things are already created.” is huge and something I didn’t mention. It my dealing with India teams, it is often the case that requirements are handed to them, and innovation can often be hampered by someone else starting the process for them. It’s difficult to pick up someone else’s trail, especially when it’s across countries and cultures.

Overall I agree with the growing state of IxD and UX in India, but I also have to think about it from the POV of a corporation working with teams there. What’s the best approach, what’s the best methods?

What’s been really interesting is to think if India can use some of its natural/cultural information to become stronger at certain UX problems/areas. When you can play to a countries strengths, that’s really intriguing to me.