YUJ Designs

About the Company

YUJ Designs is in the business of providing User Experience (UX) Design solutions for software products. The company was founded in 2009 with a vision to drive UX enablement of software products that brings value to its customers' products through innovative, usable and delightful designs. Headquartered in Pune, YUJ Designs has an operating office in Sunnyvale, California. Over the years, the company has successfully delivered 1,500+ UX projects to 70+ customers, ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies, and partnered with companies to setup their in-house UX teams.

YUJ Designs provide UX services to clients in the United States, Europe, India and APAC regions, where the majority of its current customer base lies. The firm works across breadth of industry domains – ISV, Social Networking, Telecom, Education, Supply chain, Travel, Procurement, Legal, Life sciences, e commerce, healthcare & depth of interfaces types – Portals, Enterprise Apps, Intranet, Digital TV, Tablets and Smartphones.

YUJ Designs designers come from top design institutes like Clemson University, IDC IIT Mumbai, Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design, NID and trained in Human Factors, Psychology, Product & Interface design, Visual communication, Fine Arts & Industrial Engineering.

Current Market Landscape

Worldwide, the importance of User experience design is growing. User experience design is not limited anymore to design of web applications, mobile apps or website, but expanding its boundaries into experience design of physical space, wearables, virtual/augmented reality and internet of things (IoT). The IoT space is especially challenging and full of opportunities in the coming years. At present, UX design is being adopted in the B2B segment as well as traditional industries such as manufacturing, process engineering, and construction. Design budgets for software products are growing, and we all have seen its contribution to startup successes. Overall,it’s a good time to be in UX design.

Addressing the Challenges

Demand for UX design services is growing in India - from startups, mid-level, and large software product companies. But the penetration is very low. There are approx. 10,000 ICT companies in India, but a very small percentage may have some form of UX done for their products/ services. There are yet companies who think of UX design as mere User Interface visual treatment - something that is to be done towards the end of software product development. So, the big challenge is one of awareness, and knowing what real User Experience is. YUJ has been active in the UX community for many years, and trying to create awareness through training, lectures, conferences, and workshops. 

The other challenge is of supply of good UX professionals. In the past few years, there has been a significant growth in institutes providing design education. However, the quality of design education does not match up to international standards. Hence, there is a dearth of good UX talent. YUJ Designs works with some of the well-known design institutes and conducts lectures, and training for students. The firm also offers internships, and that experience helps students learn what is expected and delivered in the industry.

With a limited pool of graduating designers and growing demand from the industry, salaries are being pushed higher - even for freshers, having an adverse effect on the ROI.

Services

YUJ’s UX Design services are broadly classified as below:

1.User Research:Understanding the users, their conscious and subconscious needs, their hopes, aspirations and fears, is the beginning of any design process. This is essential to make sure that all kinds of users feel at ease with the software, so every product they build is designed starting with the user. YUJ Designs research approaches are varied, based on specific business needs, and are usually hybrid models of User Interviews, Contextual Inquiry, Focus Groups, Usability Testing and Surveys.

2. Interaction Design: Creating effective and efficient interaction between users and products or processes is a science. YUJ Designs interaction design services are informed by data obtained from iterative user research. Design goals are derived from the business and user goals and include metrics to measure efficiency, effectiveness, and user satisfaction. YUJ Designs takes a structured approach to developing an effective Information Architecture (IA) that reflects the way users think. Using ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ approaches, designers understand the business strategies and user needs, and the relationship with the content, to develop the high level structure of the product.

3. Visual Design:Several elements go into making a great design. Of these, the visual element has the greatest potential to connect with users at an emotional level. YUJ Designs sees visual design as a great opportunity to not just attract users but also to keep them coming back. Their services help shape or amplify user’s perceptions of a product, service or brand.

4. UX Strategy Services: YUJ Design’s strategic consulting services enable organizations gain competitive advantage through user experience (UX) strategies that impact their product and business success. They help organizations build their User Experience (UX) teams to gain the first-movers advantage in globally competitive markets.YUJ Designs helps customers prepare for an environment that is ready for UX global teams to operate seamlessly.The firm also helps their customers envision innovative products through UX led methodology.

5. UX Prototype:YUJ Designs takes care of developing the front-end prototype, and works collaboratively with the back-end development team to create a compelling experience for your users. Typically, YUJ Designs creates all three parts of a front-end design viz. structure, interaction and visual design to produce a working prototype for validation.

Read More: http://www.yujdesigns.com/services/

Differentiating Factors

YUJ Designs practices UX design as a science, and therefore it can guarantee a certain level of design quality in each project. User Experience Design and Research guarantees user efficiency, memorability, learnability and effectiveness much needed for business to succeed. A typical User Interface visual color scheme can never achieve that. The company is known for its high quality designers that are trained in design and are generalists. Its services are customized for each project, and the delivery model is agile and flexible. The firm leads design projects for its customer with minimal overhead. Their designers follow a clear and holistic design process to bridge the User Experience Gap with a deep understanding of users combined with design innovation.

Clients

Some of their esteemed clients:

• eBay

• PayPal

• Cisco

• McAfee

• Honeywell

• StubHub

• Value Research Online

• Aditya Birla Group

• AnandRathi Financial Services

• Agilent Technologies

• ZS Associates

• Uniken

• GEP

• Achilles

• Foodlink

• iTradeNetwork, Inc.

• Media IQ

• Life Technologies

• Plaxo

• ConstroBazaar

• Safetab Life Sciences

• Suvidhaa

Organizational Culture

YUJ Designs believes in nurturing leadership. The designers are trained and exposed to driving UX design independently for range of industries. Hence, compared to their counterparts, their designers are much more versatile, are able lead customer conversations and push for innovation.

They have a minimal hierarchy and design ideas are encouraged from everybody. Everyone participates in design reviews - can ask questions and question design - to deliver the best. While work is what its designers are passionate about, the company also enjoysan hour of yoga before signing-off their day in the evening.

Harboring Innovation

YUJ Designs always starts by digging deep and understanding the core reasons for customer’s business challenge. On several occasions this process has made the customers understand their own problem correctly. Second, they include Design Thinking as part of their methodology. This helps designers to solve complex problems, and find desirable solutions for customers and their users. This means not only using logic (left brain),but exploring multi-dimensional possibilities through imagination and intuition (right brain). Designers are taught not to fall in love with their own ideas- enabling them to objectively evaluate each design idea for the benefit of the user. Essentially, a strategic approach of finding simplicity in complexity, incorporating beauty in functionality, while serving users expectations and experiences.

Go-to-Market Plans

YUJ Designs started in 2009, and for the first four years most of its business came from global companies in the US and Europe. Traction in India started in 2013 and they see a significant growth in India business. They continue to work with their customers overseas, and plan to open more offices in India in the coming years. YUJ Designs envisions continuing to focus on nurturing the right talent and making its staff design leaders of tomorrow.

Quick Facts

1) Year of founding:2009

2) Funding information: Self-funded

3) Founding members: Samir Chabukswar & Prasadd Bartakke

4) Office locations: Pune, India & Sunnyvale, California, US

5) Company strength: 40+

6) Website: www.yujdesigns.com