 My name is Naseekir and I work as a UX designer with SAP Labs and I work mostly simplifying complex workflows and interactions in the domain of business intelligence in SAP. But for today's talk, I am not going to bore you with all of that. In fact, it's going to be a slight detail about all the interaction stuff that you've been hearing because I'm going to share a journey of mine, a very emotional and intense journey of being part of a wonderful book called Gifted. So this is the book and this was launched by the Random House India three months back, not even three months back in the month of August and it's already gone for a third treatment and it's on the verge of being declared as a bestseller. Now what's this book about? This book is about inspiring stories of people with disabilities. And this traces the stories of 15 disabled people from India who are not as popular as, say, cricket stars or cinema stars, but in their own way, they have carved a niche for themselves and they have been successful within their own given limitations. And so then one of its co-authors, Feroz, who was the former managing director of SAP, asked me to make sketches for each of the characters of the book. I did not have the slightest idea that it was going to be a lifetime experience because as an artist, I thought I'd just have to represent the physical features, the physical part, the facial expressions, the anatomy of a person. Therefore, I sat on the drawing board and started not trying to refine the facial expressions of the character, trying to capture the anatomy perfectly. But then I realized that something was lacking as I was doing that, as I was involving the process and I've been doing this for a long time. And still I found that this work that I've been doing was not acceptable. So I realized that throughout my work, I was trying to capture the physical form of the person or rather the person, not the personality. And therefore I realized that the entire direction of the thought process is wrong because I was only trying to highlight the disability of the person which was embedded in the physical form rather than the ability of the mind, rather than the consciousness, rather than the experiences of those people. So the book is really about the triumph of human spirit over disability. Therefore, I visualized this book as a bird flying in the sky, touching the sky, touching the sun, basking in the glory of the sun. And the mandate that I sort of conceived was to visualize the mind of the people rather than represent the body. And then explore the dimensions beyond the obvious. So for example, when we are creating a person as we think about the needs, the goals, the pain points, etc. But are there more dimensions, are there more Latin boundaries that exist beyond these obvious meanings? And then use symbols and metaphors in the means of communication. Now this comes from not an artist but a great Swiss psychiatrist called Dr. John who sort of gave the theories of collective unconscious and all that. So let me take you through a couple of examples so as to highlight what I've been talking about. So this is the literal portrayal of 15 heroes of this book. And each of these characters are affected in some form or the other, some disability of the other. Some of them are blind, some of them are wheelchair, some of them are affected with autism, cerebral palsy, so on and so forth. So this is the collage of all those 15 people and they look as they are. But do they tell me more about the person, does this visual represent anything more about the experiences, about the stories that each person has to say? I'm not sure. This is the metaphorical portrayal of the 15 gifted lives. And now this is at a different level. This is at a different dimension where a person need not be a person as such with his physical attributes. But a person can become a blooming flower out of an explosion. A person can become a lamb. A person can become a bull. And I know that this explanation is not enough. And I'll highlight three stories from the book which might help you understand this process better. But please keep an open mind. So the first hero of this book is a person called Aisha Chaudhary. She's been affected with something called as pulmonary fibrosis, which means that her breathing capacity is reduced below 20%. That means she has to carry an oxygen tank wherever she goes. And the doctors have signed off saying that her end can come any moment. So this is the context of her life. And in this situation, she has carved a life for herself as a motivational and inspirational speaker. So she goes about speaking at various cities and platforms including tech and ink. You may check her talks out in the videos available on YouTube. And she's taken the task of motivating people. And she always ends up getting a spanning audition whenever she finishes her talk. And she's titled her talks called Singing in the Lifeboat, which means that we can find things to celebrate even in the middle of a shipwreck, in the middle of an ocean on a lifeboat. I think once she remarked that I may have pulmonary fibrosis, but I choose to have a happy pulmonary fibrosis. Now in this context, how do you visualize Aisha Chaudhary? So with all the achievements of hers, with all the beautiful qualities of hers, this is not the ideal picture to visualize Aisha Chaudhary, right? So I take you to the conception of mine as to how I look at Aisha Chaudhary. So this is the way I look at Aisha Chaudhary. This is the person form. The sketch is a person form. So the waves, the high waves are the challenges. They portray challenges. They symbolize challenges. They're trying to swallow the boat, but the boat is still sailing high. And the musical note denotes Aisha as a captain because she says singing in the lifeboat. And also the gentle curves of the musical note relate to the feminine personality. And all this buzz is happening under the gentle arc of a star-filled night sky. Stars denote moments of happiness and self-discovery in the mean of darkness. And who knows Aisha may also become a small, little, twinkling star in the sky after the time is up with all of us. So this is the way I look at Aisha Chaudhary. This is Aisha Chaudhary. The second example we slightly well know is Marathi Hullar. So she has won 300 medals for the country. She's a wheelchair athlete and she's been bestowed with the Padma Shree and the Arjuna Award. And her story is that when she was 14 months old, she was affected with high fever, polio, and then her body became immobile. She had to undertake 53 surgeries and electric shocks for two years before her upper body regained strength. And in spite of all this, she's been able to win 300 medals. And not only that much, she also runs an orphanage for physically challenged children who have been abandoned by their own families. Now this is the story of Marathi. How do you conceptualize that? So I try to think of a medal, portray a medal of glory which could be an equivalence of Marathi's personality. And you could see that there's a spiral in the medal. Now the spiral has many interpretations. It is a very ancient symbol. It could mean a sacred journey. It could mean expanding consciousness. It could mean all-encompassing universality. So all these characteristics are within Marathi. And you could see the ribbon of these wings. They are portrayed like the wings of a bird. So Marathi always used to say that I want to fly like a bird from one place to another during her childhood. But it's sad that she can't even walk. But the visual says that she's indeed high in the sky, carrying the torch of glory that tingles the mind. The last example is Sunil Desai, who is a social worker and founder of K. A. Taker's Foundation. So he was a successful businessman. But at the age of 33 years, he met with an accident and that left him permanently paralyzed. So for six long years, he cursed himself, he cursed his fate, he cursed the gods. He fought against his family and went into a state of severe depression. And in that period of suffering, in that dark period, a thought came to him that there could be so many people like him who are dependents, who are not able to take care of themselves. At least he had to thank his family because they were providing him support. But there could be so many who are much more deprived than him. So at a state where he was permanently paralyzed and sitting on a wheelchair, he started a foundation called K. A. Taker's Foundation. Which means he would train caregivers and provide home service to all those people who want to seek help. And it's been two decades since he's confined to a wheelchair, but he's already given employment to 250 caregivers and so many thousands have been benefited out of this service. So isn't it amazing that such a man who's not able to eat his own food is able to do so much for the society? Now again, a challenge as to how do you conceptualize Sunni, not a person who's sitting on a wheelchair, right? So this is the way I look at Sunni. The dark lines represent the trunk of a tree which is static, which is lifeless, which is paralyzed, much like the paralyzed body of Sunni. But then there's a gentle foliage around these black lines. And that could represent the spirit of mind that Sunni has. And then there's a deep shadow. I think it's not coming out well in the projection. But there's a deep shadow which indicates the love and compassion that Sunni has shown towards the society and towards himself. And therefore, all these elements sort of leave together a story. Now, I come to the end of my presentation, but I'd just like to give you the thought that in most scenarios when we are designing, visualizing our users as people or as persons, what we typically do as personas may not be enough, because what we know about humans and human mind is as little as we know about physical universe. And there are so many other dimensions that we could explore and represent people in form of symbols and metaphors. So in my talk with that thought, thank you very much.