 Because I got a feedback yesterday from some of my Filipino friends who had just come with attending this, they said that sitting behind they were not able to hear what's happening on the stage. So they said, you know, tomorrow when you speak, just be a little louder. So I was just responding to the feedback. So I believe things are all good. Right. All right. So moving on. I'm Saptarshi. Yes, my intro has already been said. I have a complicated name even for Indian standards. So please feel free to call me Saptar. That's what my friends do. So yes, I'm Saptar. I'm an engineer turned self-taught designer and I'm presently a design manager at Swiggy. No, Swiggy is a food delivery and ordering platform based out of India. You know, it looks something like this, right, and it has a storefront. It has restaurants, you know, you can pick restaurant, you can select what you want and then you can make payment, place order, and then the food gets delivered to your home. Right. You might be wondering what's new in that. There are so many other players that are doing that. What's special that you are doing, right? Yes. We are also getting into other stuff, like, you know, we are good at delivering food. So we might as well be good at delivering other things, could be groceries, medicines and anything and everything that makes us the king of convenience, right? But still that doesn't say that what is so special about you. So let me just take you through a few things. That is a number of orders that we get every day. Well, we are a startup technically, barely five years old. So you know, yes, we are a kid in that aspect, but boy, we are a big kid. To give you a perspective of what this number means, by the time I finish completing this sentence, we would have received 200 new orders on Swiggy already. That's what this number means, right? And we are also growing really fast. It doesn't end here. Last year when I joined Swiggy as a designer, it was sometime in the mid-of-2018, we were serviceable in 50 cities, right? And today it's, you know, end of 2019. Any guesses how many cities we are in? I leaked the number yesterday to some of you, but would you want to make a guess? Anyone? I got a number. Anyone else? Yeah? No one? Come on guys, make it try. It doesn't hurt. 200. All right. We surpassed everything. We are actually present in 500 cities out of today. So in the number of city thing, we have grown 10x in the last barely one one and a half year, right? Yes. We are also valued at $3.5 billion US dollar, which not only makes us the largest platform of food ordering in India, but also the most loved platform for food ordering and delivery, right? So that's a little bit about Swiggy. Of course, I'm not going to talk about Swiggy today. That would be a different talk some of the time, some of the day. I'm going to talk about unimaginable UX, sorry for this click baity title. I just wanted to ensure that you guys at least come and listen to me here, right? And a part of this has been already handled by the organizers. I think this strategically gave me this lot after coffee break so that it's ensured that everyone is caffeinated and no one would be sleeping on their seats, right? So thank you for that guys. So this is about future of design, right? Many people have different perspectives of what future of design could be. We have already heard a few speakers who had shared their understanding of their views of it, right? But I personally feel it's unimaginable. So why don't we just try? Let's do this. When I say, all of you close your eyes and I'll send you to future. You see there what's happening and come and tell us. Ready? All right, I'm just kidding. I won't be able to send you to future unfortunately, but you can still close your eyes. Let's play this small game. When I say, just close your eyes and when your eyes are closed, I will say one word, right? So you won't be seeing me speaking that word, but you will just hear me. And the moment you hear the word, imagine the first thing which comes to your mind. Clear? All right. Close your eyes. Everyone. Apple. Apple. All right. You can open your eyes now. How many of you imagine this on 30% of the people? Okay. How many of you imagine this one 5% of the people? Okay. How many of you think this is a healthier version of the apple? That's a myth. Okay. Don't believe it. How many of you imagine this? Whoa. See, the world is changing. How many of you imagine this? Very few, huh? Adam and Eve, guys. How many of you imagine this? Yeah? Yeah. We see some science guys there. All right. How many of you imagine this? No one? This? Apple? This? No? Okay. What if I do this? Now do you see the apple thing in that? Okay. So you know that was just this little trick. So what I'm trying to say is, when we hear something, we perceive certain things in a certain way and the way we do it is based on what we know already, right? So we know the red apple. We know the green apple. We know about Newton and Adam and Eve and everyone and hence we could imagine and not think about all those things, right? Yes, of course. The Steve Jobs Apple as well. I'm sure if I ask the same question to my grandmom that Apple logo is not something that she will imagine ever because she's not so used to seeing Apple devices, right? Just like you guys were not so used to seeing the top view of this Apple Park which is there in Cupertino. I mean, none of us are, right? Who sees it from there? We just know that they have a fancy office. So it didn't strike us right away when we saw this. So this is what imagination is. It is very limited to the things we know and the things that we see around or the things that we have already experienced, right? So this is present. To talk about future, let me take you to past 100 years back. People imagine back then as well, right? You know, when I was just researching online for preparing for this talk, I came across some really interesting sketches which were made sometime in the 19th century. Those were essentially artist's impression of how the year 2000 would be. I actually put some of them here. Look at this. It's a flying postman. So easy, right? You just fly there and deliver the letters right at the balcony of the user. No knocking, nothing. This is a classroom. There's a teacher at the side. Every student has a headphone which is wired and connected to one central hub. That goes all the way to the teacher. And there's another person who is probably powering the entire system. That's what I guess, firemen, flying firemen. Rescue operations would be so easy if we had some things like this. The house is on fire and firemen will just fly all the way down and just rescue out of the balcony, right? An automated floor scrubbing machine. Yeah, it has a brush, lots of hinges, things moving. You know, it will just scrub your house on your behalf. Of course, not fully automated because if you see there's a lady who's actually operating it with some sort of a chain attached to a rod, right? That's how they imagine how future would be. Another one, aero cabs, as it says. I believe it's some sort of a flying cab or a flying bus. You'll have aero cab stations like this. You just go and it just flies around and beats the traffic. Barber, you know, there's one contraption with a lot of hinges and corners. It's not only cutting the hair of one person, but also giving a shave to the other. And all this is being controlled by one person who's operating some levers to make sure that the contraption works. Interesting, isn't it? This is 2019 now and we've already lived past almost 20 years. Then 2000, year 2000, by the way, all this were done by a group of French artists back somewhere in the 19th century, early, very early 19th century, right? So you see what people imagine how 2000 would be. Our year 2000 was a way different from this, right? But all the things that they imagined were based on a couple of things here. The first one was convenience. Or the other way to put it, it's some sort of a problem, right? You also, you always want to make things easy for you. How to reduce our effort and let something else do it for you. And since they were imagining future, there was also some bit of fantasy. Any guesses what the fantasy in all those images were? Any guesses? No? Flying, yes. Because one of the biggest thing we all wished to do ever was to fly. That was one of the biggest fantasies we had. And hence, everything reflected some or the other bit of flying humans or flying things. And of course, everything was fueled with technology. Also, very limited technology, if you see. Mostly mechanical, mostly things are wired, right? They couldn't think beyond, how would it be without wires? Would wireless even be a possibility? Will there be any other form of energy other than mechanical? That they couldn't imagine. And I would like to believe there were some of the best minds who had made those imaginations. So, you know, seeing all this thing kind of makes me feel that what we imagine, what you and I imagine, or what I'm speaking over the stage today, might be completely material, 50 years or 70 or 100 years down the line. Because things will change so much, which you and I perhaps cannot even imagine today, right? Well, that was 100 years back. Let me take you 25 years back, you know, the time when I was a kid, right? I used to stay in this small town in the north eastern part of India, right? In the weekends, my younger brother wasn't born then. So it was just me, mom and dad. In the weekends, we used to do something which we stopped doing. You know what that is? Visiting friends and family. So every weekend, sometime in the evening, you know, we would sit in the scooter, dad would drive, mom would sit behind and I would be standing there in the front and we would visit our friends and families who are there, who used to live in the same town. And when we reached their door, we would often find a lock. Because appointments was not a thing. There were no mobile phones and SMS's. Yes, wired telephones were there, but I'm talking about a small town in the north eastern part of India. And telephones were restricted only to corporates and government offices. People didn't have phones in their house. So the only thing that we could do was to just set out. Go to your friend's place. If they're there, well, you have a good time. Otherwise, you just trace back. This used to happen very often. And you see how times have changed. Today, I do not even call anyone without sending a message first. As a kid, I used to wish, what if, what if we could know before if they were at home or not? It would reduce so much of effort, right? But there was one good thing, though. You know, it was always said, independence. When you're setting out, you do not know whether you will actually meet them or not, whether you'll play with their kids or not, or we do just have to trace your path back home. So that's when I was a kid. But today, I'm a creator. We all are creators, designers. And we innovate. So the question here is, can we innovate based on each and everything that we imagine, however incorrect that could be? Can we work on these what if statements and bring something from inside us, which we couldn't even have thought about and which would in turn shape the future? Right? Innovation is a very common word. And you know, I again did some Google and I found this Venn diagram. It says, you know, innovation is a combination of three things, the human factors, the business factors and the tech factors. Like the human factors could be, you know, desirability, whether you need it or not, how usable it is. Business would be, how viable is it? Should I even do or am I going to lose money or make money if I do that? And the third one is tech. You know, it's the feasibility. Whatever you have devised in your head, whatever you have cooked up in your head, is it even possible to build it? And it is said that the intersection, that is that black triangle that you see, is innovation. I beg to slightly differ in this aspect. Well, I'm sure this is innovation because big guys have said that. But the kind of innovation that we are looking for, which would take us ahead in the future and maybe make us relevant in the future, has to be slightly different. The reason being, this is present. In the future, the scope of all of these would increase. Tech would be more feasible. Business would be more viable. And of course, we humans, our definition of desirability will change. It could become something like this. And if that happens, it means that the intersection also increases. Now we have a bigger triangle. If we concentrate on the new section of the triangle which has formed, something which is not feasible today, not viable today, perhaps not even desirable today, I guess our innovation sits there. Shall we call it innovation 2.0? Damn, I just created a logo out of nowhere. The designer to me doesn't just go out. So yeah, thinking beyond what the limits are, I believe is a way of innovation which will take us ahead. But the question is how? How do we know how much of these would increase? Whether they will grow or not grow? What would happen? I was thinking really hard as to how people become creative, how people innovate. That led me into thinking one common thing which we all designers face. Tell me if you face this, huh? We as designers design a lot of things, very innovative, very creative. Then we show it to our stakeholders. It could be tech, it could be business. And then they come back and say, hey, you know what, this is not gonna work. Because reason one, two, three, or reason four, five, six, this is not just gonna work. It's cool and all, but it doesn't work. Has it happened with you guys? No one? Raised hands or even snapping fingers will do, it's been here. Yeah, right, so it happens to all of us. But here's the question, did the reverse ever happen to you? That is, other teams coming to you with their ideas, with their suggestions, and you shooting them down saying that this doesn't make sense from a UX point of view or from a design point of view. Did it happen? Yes? Couple of voices and snaps as well. Yes, it happened to me as well. And you know, I feel really good to shoot down. Yes, it won't happen because I know UX, you do not. Okay, that's not the attitude I work with, just saying. That led me into thinking, what is the reason that I innovate which other people shoot down and they innovate which I shoot down? The reason is, I feel, because I know a lot about design, at least something about design, maybe more than the other counterparts in my work. Similarly, the other counterparts know a lot about tech, business, marketing, sales, and a lot of other things which I do not. Hence, when I create something, I do not have the enough knowledge to know if this will work or if this is even possible. Hence, I'm making something which is cool, which is creative and innovative, but maybe not feasible. So is the reverse also true, which is restrictions? Now that we have restriction, which holds us into building only what is possible, because it narrows our thought. So if we just reverse it, that is remove all these restrictions, remove all this prior knowledge that we have, can we do really creative and innovation 2.0 kind of work? Maybe. Right? That brought me to the Venn diagram again. If we were to break all these restrictions, maybe we should increase the scope. To such an extent that none of these things affects us. Maybe something like this. So that we don't just work out of a small triangle, but we have the entire canvas and there is nothing to restrict or hold us our thinking. Trust me, this is one of the toughest part that you would face in doing this, because we all know learning something is tough, but what is even tougher is to unlearn something that we already know, right? And I think many people also call it the blue sky thinking. You know, it's almost like the blue sky where you're just flying and flying and there's nothing to stop you or hold you in what you're doing. So does this work? I don't know. Have I ever tried this? Yes, I did. So, yeah, I wanted to give you this example as well. Just few days back, we were trying to do a small experiment at Swiggy, right? So it's like everything what Swiggy does today is what it does today and it does fine. But will it be the same couple of years down the line? What would be the future of Swiggy? What would be the future of commerce or what could be the future of food tech? To arrive at those answers, we had to do exactly this. We let go of every restriction. This was a project which was driven not by any product managers or any project managers, but a group of four designers. We set our time aside and we did blue sky thinking, removing every constraint that we have. And then we came up with an amazing proposition, whether that will work or not, that we still do not know, but at least it feels like it's a strong proposition which could be the thing of the future, right? Because what is impossible today will surely be possible tomorrow. And since it will be possible tomorrow, I don't think we should be holding ourselves in doing that today. That's pretty much what I had, folks. Thanks a lot. Would love to take some questions. Hello. Okay, thank you. And we have some questions. So what would you do if a UX team sneakily reaches out to engineers asking to change final design as what they think is better, even though the stakeholders have already approved? This has happened many times for this person. Okay, I'll just read. What do the UX team sneakily reaches out to engineers as she changed final designs? I suppose the thing is better. So I'm assuming the question is that certain decision was taken as a team, then a certain subset, maybe one or two members of the team goes out and asks for the change sneakily. Is that what you meant? Okay, let me assume that. So if that is the case, then there's a certainly a difference in opinion between that part of the team and the rest of the team, which I believe might happen in bigger teams. I haven't really worked in really big teams. The biggest team that I have, design team that I've worked with was around 35 members. So I'm not sure if I'm qualified to answer, but let me try. I feel in that case, the team itself is not aligned, right? Probably the team should talk amongst themselves more often and find out and listen to each and every one's opinion. One person feels that this is the right way to go about and not what we have been doing. He should have the courage to voice out his opinions in front of his team so that there are no such discrepancies. Not sure if I answered it right. And next, the layout seems similar to other apps. How do you manage it when people and designers say that you're copying the same layout? How would you manage those conversations and deal with those issues? Okay, so regarding this, I think some great guy has said that good designers copy and the great designers steal, so it's because the difference is when you steal, no one knows about the origin of where it has come from and everyone assumes that it is yours. So I believe that's the thing is. Yes, you're right, there have been a lot of talks because all of the apps, the competition kind of does a similar work. If I'm selling food, someone else is selling food as well. So how different do you think it can get? Not much. The entire flow, the way things work will more or less be same with just some finishing touches and some magic which your company creates which say someone else might not have or they might have created their own set of magic. So I think what matters are these differentiating factors, right? Yes, we have competitors in India, right? But what we stress on is not on the fact that how similar or identical we are to someone else, but what we stress on are what are strengths. What is that Swiggy magic that I'm creating which differentiates the entire game and makes it ours? And one more question, what font are you using? I think this is the third time I've heard that question. Looks like you guys really love that. So all the serif fonts that you've, okay, not serif, all the regular fonts that you've seen, I haven't studied design, you know, I don't know all the terminologies. That is Gotham and that script font that you saw, that's called Sacramento. I was just speaking to someone. So why I love this font a lot is it goes, it pairs up really well with something else, the other fonts, because, you know, the normal texts are all straight and all the script fonts are usually tilted. This one is straight. So I think it beautifully goes well with, so I tend to pair them. Thank you. Thank you, Saptarishi. And now we'd like to give you a token of appreciation.