A designer, drifting in the crowd

Its been more than 3 months, I am back to corporate culture. For long time, I had been working on freelance and was habituated with self driven work environment. Hence joining a corporate was intriguing. Its not that this was my first time but it was surely exciting. I read blogs and articles and books tremendously and made myself ready to provide the best of me as a User Interface Designer.

The product company i work with has a huge team of developers and a small team of idea guys like the Business Analysts(BAs). To my surprise, the devs were demotivated and the BAs were less motivated. I thought perhaps this is the same everywhere in India and I should concentrate on what i can do best.

I gave them the sleek, user-friendly, clean and crisp look to their existing design. When I would request a BA to brief about a module he would tell me, you need not know that. I don't blame him. but designers in India are looked upon in the same way. Mostly peers look at me like a 'photoshop monkey' but i tried to prove them with my insights. They would accept my ideas saying that it is their thought process. When One of the BAs asked me for a solution, he put it forward to the upper management as his own. One instance, when i suggested different dashboards for different users was kept unheard and it came to me in turn as, "we the marketing team has decided to have unique dashboards for the application".

Drifting In The Crowd

I am in no need for praise or acknowledgement but somehow that demotivated me. Right now, I just want my timely paycheck and am thinking like any other designer in India. Not to help make a user-friendly product but to make money out of the time spent at office. Sad Scenario. I wish, i could work for a foreign company outside India where each one aims passionately to give out the best product in market.

Lets go seed collecting

This is a post on how something that interested me so much got passed down to my son naturally. Nature always interested me although staying in Bangalore for a couple of years made it evoke. I started noticing various fruit trees in my locality like coconut, papaya, jackfruit, pomegranate, fig and banana. It was surprising to me how food was grown in some households. The beauty of various seasons was much prominent in HSR Layout, making me exploring more about other trees and searching them on google. Few months ago I was much frustrated by my son's rag picking all day. He would stop at various intervals on our way to pick up things like tobacco wrappers or used plastic bottles from the roadside. While in the park he would keep searching for chips packets or used lollipop sticks. I was worried about his health and overall his habit. I would explain him with logic and multiple repetition, yet no gain. I myself was frustrated with so many NOs to him. I thought there need to ...

I Salute The Mother In You

I have been traveling through BEST bus since a month now. Observing passengers especially ladies. I prefer the reserved seat for ladies. I usually get to sit immediately there. A lady in burkha sat beside me with her 7months boy. I started. Me: "Does he have teeth yet?" She was very welcoming and showed me his tiny milky teeth. He was cute, enjoying that he was travelling. Me: "Is he your first child?" She said, “No its my third, I have other two girls. I just dropped them to school and am returning from there.” It is a personal opinion on how many kids a couple wants to have but what amazes me is how a mother takes care of as many kids she has with all the love and attention. Today while at the bus stop for boarding my ride i meet a lady. She lost her husband at much early age and had two kids to take care. she started her career at 30 and didn’t look back. Its cool how she manages her home and work together with kids. No personal life! I salute th...

Colaba Circuit with my best friend

As a child I was always excited to visit Town (the southern part of Mumbai as they say) for every other vacation. This is the place my mother's parents stayed. I was mesmerized by the Gothic style buildings and the tall ceiling rooms. There are more heritage buildings here, than any other part of the country. So I decided to take M on the "Colaba Circuit" (I like to call it that way!) If you went on a vacation to some foreign country what would you like to see?... All the beautiful architechure, museum, restaurants, the market places and other sceneries.. right? I am sure very few of us have seen this part of their very own place, Mumbai.

Urvi's Scribbling

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