About me
Rushikesh Subhedar
Design Strategist | User Experience Designer | Nature Photographer
I'm a design strategist, experience designer, photographer, traveler, and coffee enthusiast living in the United States. I deliver value through intuitive and visually pleasing digital experiences that include creating products that not only offer a delightful and positive user experience but also support key business drivers and organizational goals.
I graduated with a Bachelor of Engineering, majors in Information Technology and also a Certified Usability Analyst (CUA) from Human Factors International, USA. Currently, I am pursuing a master's degree in human-computer interaction and information technology from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.I have been involved in photography for many years, I most like spending time in nature and photographing birds, wildlife, & landscapes.
- Design Process
I strongly believe in the user-centered design process and always follow the design process for every project delivery. I am sharing one of the recent design activities which I had conducted for my master’s degree program.
Concept
Day by day, human beings are trying to achieve more by maximizing the accumulation and consumption of physical facilities. We are becoming unkind, unconcerned to people, nature, and missing our core responsibilities for society and mother earth.
There is a need for a tool that will help every individual to learn, plan, and adopt gratitude skills to become more sympathetic and a better human being. Also, there is a need for real-time tracking and execution of individuals' social goals and ecological footprints to maintain social and natural harmony.
User research
My primary goal was to get more insights into the user personas, understanding users' pain points with traditional practice methods, and their expectations from any prospect practice supporting tool.
I conducted need-finding research with the help of an online survey and focus group discussion. Primarily, I was looking to gain detailed insights on the user's current state journey and the following important aspects; Who are our users? User demographics, User characteristics, Users’ understanding of gratitude and ecological footprint practice, User’s objectives, User primary goals, etc.
User persona
After need-finding exercise (survey and focus group), I did an analysis of user data findings and identified the following personas for the conceptual app:
- Practice seeker
- Advanced practitioner
Practice seekers are novice users of gratitude and ecological footprint monitoring practice. They are seeking more details about popular and effective practices. They also need frequent scheduling and reminding support to get started with gratitude and ecological footprints monitoring practice.
Advanced practitioners are expert users who are already practicing gratitude and ecological footprint monitoring without any tools. The objective of the user is to enhance the practice schedules, adopting more practices, tracking practice progress, and motivating others.
User journey mapping
I started mapping current state and future user journeys for identified personas. The primary objective of this exercise was to gain how users are performing their gratitude and ecological footprint practices with and without any gratitude notification tool. I gathered more details about what the user is doing, thinking, and feeling while performing various activities.
Finally, I captured identified opportunities based on the journey map outcomes.
User storyboard
Created an illustrated storyboard to visualize ‘practice seekers to advanced practitioners’ experience with the help of a gratitude notification mobile app. This helped me to get better visibility of how the user interaction would be involved throughout the app experience.
Low-fidelity wireframe
Post user journeys and storyboard and Information architecture (IA), I started with conceptual sketches for my design. For low fidelity prototyping, I used Balsamiq mockup's rapid prototyping tool.
I did identify a few primary components of the design during the low fidelity prototype activity. These components were necessary to engage users with gratitude and ecological footprint practice utility.
High-fidelity prototype
During the high-fidelity prototype, visual design was one of the key aspects of Gratitude Notification Mobile App design. I strongly believe that a clean and concise visual scheme can improve the user experience significantly as a natural urge of the human brain is to see comforting colors on surfaces that are glaring. Along with visual design elements, I did more focus on the Affordances, Signifiers, and Clickability aspect of the design to make offered functions more obvious and intuitive.
Resume & Portfolio
Check more about my current employment, project experiences, roles and responsibilities, educational and professional certification details. Please get in touch with me at rushikesh@live.in for a detailed resume.
A detailed design portfolio is available for online review. Please get in touch with me at rushikesh@live.in for a portfolio access code.
Cypress Tree Colony
The cypress tree is one of my favorite subjects to photograph birds and urban wildlife. There are many reasons you may want to consider planting a Leyland cypress tree in your backyard. A Leyland cypress tree works very well as a privacy fence, but if you love birds or tiny urban wildlife, you can plant one with them in mind. Since these trees are very dense, it provides some protection to small creatures from severe weather and predators like hawks or raptors.
