In this episode of Anamorphic podcast, we have a guest with us — Madhuri Maram discussing the latest news items in the startup & design industry. We specifically spoke about news items on  - A post on UX Design publication on Medium titled "Case Study Factory" - GPT-3, AI & Future of Design #design #ui #ux #ai #artificialintelligence #casestudy #designeducation #education #gpt3

What happens when you get three women leaders on a panel to talk about #design, leadership, #culture, hiring, team-building, and better representation? You get an hour and a half of awesome conversation!  In the 4th edition of industry roundtable, we'll listen to — Geetaa Bhatt (Head of Design @ Clevertap), Aastha Gaur (UX Lead @Google), and Karthi (Founder @ Xperian) about their experience of 10+ years, building teams, the leaders that pushed them to become leaders, and how they are investing & growing the next generation of leaders.  Karthi Subbaraman, Founder @ Xperian  Karthi's career spans over 20 years. She started her career as a Software engineer and later became a designer HP. She'd go on to work with many big names in the industry and become a visiting faculty at NID and MIT.  Her recent venture is Xperia, where she teaches Product Design & Product Management to the next generation of designers and product managers.  https://www.linkedin.com/in/skarthi/  https://twitter.com/karthi2209   Geetaa Bhatt, Head of Design @ Clevertap  Geeta got her masters in design from NID and has been in the design industry for over 15 years. In the past, she has worked with brands like Human Factors International, TechMahindra, Network18 and now is a Head of Design at Clevertap.  https://www.linkedin.com/in/geetaa/  https://twitter.com/geetaabhatt  Aastha Gaur, UX Lead @ Google  Aastha has been in the design industry for over 13 years. She did her bachelors in design from NIFT, and Masters in Fine Arts & Graphic Design from California Institute of Arts.  In the past, she has worked with brands like Distinct, Yahoo!, and now is a Senior Manager UX at Google. Aastha also has a TikTok account you should check out.  https://www.linkedin.com/in/aasthagaur/  https://twitter.com/astadapasta   Topics we covered:  Why did you choose design as a career?   What & who pushed you to become a leader?   Picking & growing leaders   Women Leaders   Lack of women in the industry   Parental Tax   How do you hire in your team?   Message for the audience   Want to see someone as a guest on the next roundtable? Have a topic in mind we should cover? Let me know on twitter. Do check out the past episodes of the industry roundtable. #leadership #hiring #culture #startupculture #designleaders #womenleaders #womenintech #leadership #hiring #designhiring #parentaltax

Continuing our #whataftercollege interview series with industry professionals, we spoke to another designer & popular YouTuber with over 40k subs — @designpilot aka Chethan KVS 🥳   Watch the full video on YouTube that includes project walk through — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXRmCPe8n6M Chethan started learning Photoshop, After Effects, and other design software when he was a Chartered Accountant student! Later, his college picked him to lead the design team — while teaching them software and design skills — he created his YouTube Channel which now has over 40k subscribers (at the time of this interview): https://youtube.com/designpilot   We cover his journey, learnings, and insights along the way and how he got his #firstdesignjob, discovered @ABNUX and got into #Unacademy and more. What does the interview process at Unacademy looks like? How many people are there in their design team and what skills do they have? How do they collaborate to design products from start to finish.  And much more!  #designerinterview #designcareer #designyoutuber #youtuber #startups #adobe #adobephotoshop #photoshop #aftereffects #motiondesign #designteams #designcollaboration #abhinavchhikara #designpilot

In this episode of Anamorphic, we have an excerpt from an Instagram live with Punit Chawala. He's a UX Manager at Magic Bricks and runs a popular design channel with over 20k subs. You can find Punit Chawla on  Instagram: instagram.com/punitchawlaofficial/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/punitweb  YouTube youtube.com/punitchawla We got started by talking about his YouTube journey and why he joined Instagram so late? Then we went on to take audience questions like: We also took live questions from the audience like:  1. How do you know that you can actually make a career in UX or UI Design? 2. Uncertainty of lack of certification or internship in your design career  3. Is a degree in design worth it? Cost-Value analysis  4. Will it be hard to get a design job without a degree or certification?  5. I keep getting lost while learning design...  6. Designer salaries in India & undervaluing ourselves  7. Why do designers hate Adobe XD and the case of Punit's #missingXDpackage  8. How do you collaborate as designers & UX designers?  9. Do designers or product managers need to know coding? What coding skills are required in these roles?  Punit recently launched his new podcast — Design Uncut — go check it out: https://anchor.fm/punit-chawla4 #design #designcareer #uiuxdesigner

How does Google hire designers? What's the hiring & interview process like? How can one improve their chances of getting through? Does portfolio matter? is it necessary for a designer? How do you convince business and stakeholders to focus on delivering real design value instead of focusing on short-term and aesthetics? Hardik Pandya, a product designer at Google, answered these and many more questions on Instagram live. --- Hardik Pandya is a Designer at Google: @hvpandya on twitter https://twitter.com/hvpandya Instagram: https://instagram.com/hvpandya

In the third designers' roundtable, we bring you quality rants with Arjun Arunkumar (Swiggy), Hardik Pandya (Google), and Madhuri Maram (Xperian). What's something that happens everywhere with all designers but we don't talk about it enough? In this episode, we spoke about technical debt, feasibility, and bandwidth and how it affects the work of designers.  How can designers build shared understanding and when, at times, you have to obsessed with pixel-perfection? From there, we go on to discussing how designers and design do not have the last say or veto on the final design, output, and user experience and how do we handle that. How is that different from a company that is plain bad at making quality products? And at last, we discuss all the times when the business, client, or non-designers prioritise aesthetics over usability and UX and the beautiful words they use while doing it.  In this episode: Arjun Arunkumar is a UX designer at Swiggy. He is @averageintel on twitter and @jedijun on instagram Hardik Pandya is a Designer at Google. He is @hvpandya on twitter and instagram Madhuri Maram is co-founder of Xperian and is @iruhdam on Instagram and @iruhdam24 on twitter

This roundtable turned to a conversation between the two — Abhinav Chhikara & Sidharth, since the other guests couldn't make it. We talked about several topics but mostly covered: *Switching to design career* - Switching from a non-design industry to design or designer roles - Why self-learning is the future of design and why & how you should make your own "path" - A framework by Abhinav on how you can track your progress and what you can expect as you start to self-learn design *Switching from one design specialization to another* - Why may you want to change — what are some good reasons? - Switching from Graphic Design to Product Design - Product Designers learning or moving to Motion Design and vice versa *Generalist vs specialist & multi-disciplinary designers* - Difference and common things between a generalist and a specialist - How requirements and opportunities change as you shift between the two Stories - We frequently share our success — let's talk about one story of failure and what you'd learn from it *Side projects* Abhinav is working on www.10kdesigners.com — with a goal to help 10,000 new self-taught designers emerge in the industry with a network of industry experts. His YouTube Channel, uisources.com, booklets.io, and many future projects   will be under that mother brand. After several failed attempts at building some apps, I have moved back to  blog ging, vlogging, speaking at colleges, creating content, & sharing his journey — watching folks from college enter the industry and  d o well, over the years, and the possibility of being a part of their story is what keeps me going. --- Abhinav Chhikara is a design educator, digital creator, youtuYouTuberber, and mentor to many designers across the country. Check out his YouTube channel at youtube.com/ABNUX --- Find the full transcript of the podcast here.

While each one of us is born naturally curious, the education system & our mental-models, that our society runs on, train it out of us. Owning and honing this curiosity can change our lives — especially in the age of the internet.   With the internet, education yourself and building a career & wealth has become the easiest it has ever been. You can pick-up any soft-skill, learn a language, learn to design, build an app, learn programing, find jobs and freelance gigs across the world, collaborate with folks, or even network and build a brand.  We can either use the internet to stalk our crushes and ex-s or use to our advantage.   My journey with curiosity & internet led me to try out my hands at the business starting at the age of 12, and then being a part of Indian startup ecosystem with Instamojo (2012-2019) and now across the world with Headout. Working startups & building industry-changing products is my calling.    Startups create wealth — and wealth is better than selling time to get money. However, wealth & success both are subjective — for some, it can be owning shares, IPs, or degrees, for others, it can be a stable relationship, living a healthy & natural life. So how do you find and define your criteria of success? How do you #findyourpassion?    The first step is to expose yourself to various ideas until you start getting interested in something. You can use the internet to do this — Wikipedia & YouTube is your friend here. (both free!)    The second step is to try and invest effort into your interest and gain some skill & experience — you can find tutorials & people online to help you with this.   Once we start putting effort and see the results — that's when half the "interest" drop from viable options. Some that stick will turn into a passion as you continue to invest focus & time in it.   In the world where most mundane jobs will be taken over by AI, just a college degree won't be enough.  More and more startups & jobs will revolve around multi-disciplinary people. Don't wait for a sign form the universe — skills & learnings compound over time — startup today.    --- Speech by King Sidharth at PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore on 22 Feb 2020.   ---    Sidharth has been part of several startups in the Indian startup ecosystem — from Cleartax & Instamojo to now at Headout solving product & design problems.  He's given talks at 40+ colleges and events talking about future careers, startups, self-learning, and design, including at two TEDx events.   Invite Sidharth to your college: @kingsidharth on Instagram or Google "King Sidharth speaker" -- Check out the video on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmRlPl_Ljh8  (or search for "King Sidharth internet career" on YouTube)

What if we could get some kick-ass folks to sit together and talk about questions and issues that most won't address.  With the first roundtable, we explored the topic "Career Path as a Designer", with:  Abhinav Chhikara — Designer, YouTuber, & Digital Creator  Arjun Arunkumar, Designer at Swiggy  Hardik Pandya — Designer at Google   Madhuri Maram — Co-founder at Xperian & D+P, Host at Hireworthy Podcast  ---   Here are some questions we talked about:  What, we wish, we knew when starting our careers as a designer 1:38   What excites us about the future of design & tech? 12:55  Career Options: Individual Contributor (IC) vs Managerial Roles (and other ideas) 34:44  Importance of Design Evangelism & Design Mentorship — for organisations & individuals 54:42  Design Community & Industry Talk 01:07:18 Bloopers 01:20:22 From improving on communication, collaboration to alignment and people-management skills. We talked about all!   How would you answer these questions? What were your favourite moments from the roundtable?  Have someone in mind that we should invite for a roundtable? Leave a comment!   #design #designcareer #uiuxdesigner #seniordesigner #leaddesigner #designmanager #careertips #designcareertips

Nandini Gangal (from Udaipur, Rajasthan) started as an engineering student, taught herself UI/UX design and went on to become a product designer at Rentomojo, Flipkart, and (now) CRED.  In the first part of her interview, we discuss her childhood influences, how she discovered & learned design, how she convinced her parents for this unconventional career choice. Transcription: