reflection on experience

This project has built the design practitioner skills in me to handle the stakeholder and user side of designing a novel product that never existed in the market till that date. Bixby was called the Samsung’s intelligent agent, but the clarity and marketing was difficult as it was seen as another Google Assistant or Siri. the truth is, it is not. Bixby was a revolution in the UI interaction on mobile devices to control your touch interaction through simple and natural voice commands. This takes more than creating a single interface for an assistant and building the NLP structure in the back-end like traditional conversational user interfaces. Given this novel aspect, there were challenges in multiple directions in terms of expert’s knowledge to design and construct such interfaces AND convey this complexity through “best experience” for users. In the beginning, there were no users, but customers as we had to sell the idea of this product. Therefore, it began with multiple avenues such as designing the basic agent’s personality (voice, type and vision), VUIs for Samsung’s connected devices, Bixby on multiple device landscapes and expanding future capabilities through DEX modes. The project had multiple goals to make Bixby the face of Samsung’s products. This is when I understood how business works and its impact on designing the complex ecosystems we create through these products. This is learning 1 !

Learning 2 was actually dealing with stakeholders of different cultural, disciplinary and expert backgrounds. I was tagged a “designer”, sometimes “researcher” in through this whole process, but suddenly I saw myself representing my home team in Headquarters. I had to interface with product managers, developers, VPs and fellow designers of other units. The conversations explode the possibilities, feasibility and constraints you need to face. These had to be translated into your design decisions, sometimes even if you are uncomfortable or hope for something more than what is accepted.

There was a rapid phase of my growth through these experiences, culturally, personally and professionally. There were multiple dimensions of cross-cultural interactions and stakeholder discussions that helped me to “become a designer” that I am today that helps me. The experiences you live affect the kind of designer you turn out to be and this inter-dependency has to be reflected upon constantly as designers have more responsibilities than just creating usable products. This is my learning 3!