Rohit Singh — Writing

Why stress is good for you

2025-07-10T02:29:38+00:00

Think stress is your enemy? Think again.

You’re sitting at your desk, heart pounding before a big presentation. Your palms are sweaty, your mind is racing, and you feel that familiar surge of energy coursing through your body. Your first instinct might be to label this as “bad stress” and try to eliminate it.

But what if I told you that this feeling might be exactly what you need to perform at your best?

Most of us equate all stress with negative experiences, but eustress is actually positive stress that can promote health, motivation, and productivity. The problem isn’t stress itself. The problem is that we’ve been taught to fear it.

What makes stress good for you

Eustress produces positive feelings of excitement, fulfillment, meaning, satisfaction, and well-being. Unlike the overwhelming feeling of distress, good stress makes you feel confident and stimulated by the challenge you’re facing.

Here’s the key difference:

Good stress (eustress): Good stress is the anticipation of going on holiday and feeling excited about what you need to do to prepare for it. It’s short-term, inspiring, and enhances your performance.

Bad stress (distress): Bad stress is making a pre-holiday to-do list and feeling panicked and overwhelmed by everything on it. It leaves you feeling depleted and anxious.

The situation might be identical. The difference is how your brain interprets what’s happening.

The surprising benefits of good stress

Stress is an essential part of life. Without stress we die inside and leave this world at 25, before we’re eventually buried at 75 and have a funeral for our remains. Most of us don’t have too much stress. No. We don’t have enough. Healthy stress is a source of growth. Stress is a component of high performance.

Here’s what good stress actually does for you:

It boosts your performance

According to Yerkes-Dodson law, stress can improve performance–at least, up to a certain point. That surge of adrenaline you feel before a challenge isn’t working against you. It’s preparing your body and mind to perform at their peak.

Eustress encourages us to stretch our limits and achieve our goals. It’s that extra push we need to study for an exam, train for a marathon, or complete a challenging work project.

It strengthens your resilience

Eustress can build mental resilience, better equipping us to handle future stress. Each time you successfully navigate a challenging situation, you’re building evidence that you can handle difficult things.

When you face a stressful situation, it can help you learn more about yourself, your skills, and your limits. As you learn more about what you are capable of, you’re more likely to feel able to handle such situations in the future.

It improves your health

While bad stress hurts your immune system, some research indicates that short-term stressors can help improve your body’s ability to deal with illness and injury.

Exercise, for example, can induce eustress that improves health by challenging and strengthening the heart and lungs. It may also reduce the risk of certain mental health conditions and even help a person live longer.

It enhances creativity and focus

The best thing about eustress is the contribution it makes towards creativity and cognitive function. Since it motivates a person to do better, it triggers the parts of the brain responsible for creativity, ensuring that you are more capable of coming up with innovations that contribute to your productivity.

How to tell if your stress is working for you

The difference between good and bad stress often comes down to one simple question: Does this particular stressor feel like a threat to your health or happiness at this current moment or is it a challenge to overcome for the better?

Signs you’re experiencing good stress:

You feel energized rather than drained
The challenge feels manageable
You have a sense of excitement or anticipation
You feel confident in your ability to handle the situation
The stress is temporary and has a clear endpoint

Signs your stress has turned harmful:

You feel overwhelmed or out of control
The pressure feels endless with no clear resolution
You’re experiencing physical symptoms like headaches or sleep problems
You’re avoiding the situation rather than engaging with it

How to transform bad stress into good stress

Stress and how it effects you really depends on your mindset. For example, lets say you have a financial crisis and can either completely freak out, letting it overwhelm you or you can use that to motivate you to make a change for the better and increase your income.

Here are three ways to shift your stress from harmful to helpful:

1. Reframe challenges as opportunities

Research shows that when an event is perceived as a “threat,” people respond to it differently than if it’s seen as a “challenge.” Threats tend to elicit a greater stress response and create greater levels of anxiety, while challenges can be exciting and even enjoyable to overcome.

Instead of thinking “This presentation could ruin my career,” try “This presentation is a chance to showcase my expertise.”

2. Focus on what you can control

Stress isn’t bad. It causes us to focus, become determined, and test our mettle. It’s when stress crosses over into distress that we lose sight of our important long-term goals and instead look for what will relieve us now.

Good stress keeps you focused on solutions. Bad stress makes you focus on problems you can’t solve.

3. Build your stress tolerance gradually

Develop tolerance to stress by deliberately exposing yourself to manageable challenges. A simple way to do this is to participate in activities that are challenging but feel doable and have a clear route forward.

The bottom line

Eustress helps us stay motivated, work toward goals, and feel good about life. The goal isn’t to eliminate stress from your life. It’s to transform your relationship with it.

The next time you feel that familiar surge of stress, pause and ask yourself: “Is this challenge pushing me to grow, or is it overwhelming me?” If it’s the former, lean into it. That stress might be exactly what you need to reach your full potential.

Remember: Feel the pain and you’ll experience a gain. The discomfort you’re feeling isn’t a sign something’s wrong. It might be a sign that something’s about to go very right.

Society doesn't want you happy - it wants you safe

2025-06-29T02:40:45+00:00

One of my close friends spent 8 years’ worth of his savings on his sister’s marriage. When I asked him why, he couldn’t give me a straight answer.

After digging deeper, the truth came out: it was all about appearances, about what people would think.

This story isn’t uncommon. I see it everywhere. Smart people are throwing away years of their lives chasing someone else’s definition of success.

They’re living according to a script they never wrote, following rules they never agreed to. But here’s the question nobody asks: who benefits when you live this way?

The survival programming that no longer serves us

To understand why my friend made such a devastating financial decision, we need to examine the programming running in the background of our minds.

Following society’s rules wasn’t a bad thing when we were in the jungle.

Those days are over.

You’re not going to be eaten by a lion on your way to work.
You won’t starve if you don’t plant crops this season.
Wild animals aren’t hunting you while you sleep.

Yet despite living in the safest era in human history, something’s deeply wrong.

Suicide is still the 3rd largest cause of death among young people (based on WHO report). How is this possible?

Because society optimizes for your safety, not your happiness.

The same tribal programming that kept your ancestors alive is now keeping us trapped.

Your parents wanted you to pick a “safe” career. Your teachers pushed you toward “stable” professions.

The message is clear: don’t take risks, don’t stand out. Just follow the path everyone else is following, and you’ll be fine.

But “fine” isn’t living. It’s existing.

The problem with living in survival mode

When you’re in survival mode, your brain only cares about one thing: staying safe. This makes long-term happiness impossible.

Why? Because survival mode hijacks your brain. Instead of asking “What would give me fulfillment or freedom?” you ask “What will keep me secure?”

This explains why you see people making “safe” choices that destroy their lives:

Taking jobs they hate for steady paychecks
Staying in toxic relationships that died years ago
Buying expensive cars to impress people
Choosing prestigious careers their parents or teachers wanted

Here’s the trap: Real happiness comes from growth and progress. But survival mode blocks both.

Have you seen any scientist or entrepreneur who succeeded by playing it safe?

Steve Jobs dropped out of college. Einstein was considered a failure in school. Every breakthrough comes from people who ignored safety and solved new problems.

But society keeps you focused on survival: your education loans, your retirement, your financial security.

When you’re worried about paying bills, you don’t have mental space to solve meaningful problems or create real value.

The result? You optimize for safety and get misery. You avoid risk and guarantee regret.

How capitalism takes advantage of your survival mode

It’s okay for me to see people in misery, but what’s not okay is that rich people are taking advantage of this survival mechanism.

This leads us to an uncomfortable truth about the system we’re living in.

They prioritize profit over people:

The government we vote for serves corporations over citizens
The schools we learn in train workers, not thinkers
The food we eat is engineered to addict us
The places where we earn our living exploit labor
The hospitals where we get treated focus on symptoms, not cures
The social media platforms where we make friends harvest our attention for profit

Everything around you is designed to exploit you while convincing you it’s good for you.

My wake-up call

Until I was 20, I believed money was everything. Until 23, I discovered money wasn’t everything.

But it took multiple life challenges and some brutal self-reflection to realize how completely I’d been following someone else’s rules.

This realization forced me to completely redefine what wealth actually means.

What wealth actually means

After 2022, my definition of wealth completely transformed.

Nassim Taleb captures it perfectly: “True wealth consists in worriless sleeping, clear conscience, reciprocal gratitude, absence of envy, good appetite, muscle strength, physical energy, frequent laughs, no meals alone, no gym class, some physical labor, good bowel movements, no meeting rooms, and periodic surprises.”

Notice what’s missing from that list?

Stock portfolios. Designer brands. Social media followers. Corner offices.

Signs you’re stuck in the system

I’m writing down quick bullet points so you can compare them with yourself and understand your current situation.

If any of these points apply to you, then you need to work on yourself:

You spend most of your day doing tasks that feel meaningless or empty
You’re always stressed about money, deadlines, or what others think of you
You followed the “expected” path: college → job → marriage → house → kids without questioning it
Your self-worth depends on salary, social media likes, or other people’s approval
You make decisions based on fear rather than fulfillment or curiosity
Your default response to any discomfort is to buy something or scroll
You accept limiting beliefs like “work is supposed to be hard” or “money doesn’t grow on trees”
You feel powerless to change your situation, even though you know something’s wrong

Use these methods to become aware of hidden society rules

Awareness is the first step toward freedom. But you need practical methods to see through the programming.

Start with what I call “profit awareness”

So, whatever you’re doing, just ask yourself: who will profit from what I’m doing?

What I Think I Want (System Programming)	Who Profits?	What I Actually Want (Authentic Self)
Endless scrolling	Social media companies, advertisers	Real connections and meaningful content
Six-figure salary	Employers, tax system	Freedom to choose my schedule
Big house	Banks, real estate industry	Peaceful living space
Expensive car	Auto industry, loan companies	Reliable transportation
Designer clothes	Fashion brands, credit companies	Confidence and self-expression
Latest iPhone	Tech companies	Communication and creativity
Expensive degree	Universities, loan providers	Knowledge and skills

See, there’s always someone making a profit from what you do.

But if designer clothes are important for your seminar and help you get more clients, then go for it.

Don’t overthink when something is important for your core survival needs.

Then follow up with some simple questions (optional)

Find people who are following the path you want to follow or are currently following. If possible, ask them privately:

→ Are you genuinely happy with what you’re doing? Did you want to do this your whole life?

Most people will say yes, and that’s where you have to ask:

→ Can you do this without money or with less money?

Trust me, most people are lost and just working for the money. That’s what society told them to do.

Takeaway:

Always remember: If you don’t create your own path, society will give you one.

Even if you’re aware of society’s rules, that doesn’t mean you can stop your life from getting ruined

Here’s where things get complicated. Knowing the system exists doesn’t automatically free you from it. Fear keeps you trapped.

Fear makes you choose suffering over uncertainty

You know your relationship is dead, but you stay because “what if I never find anyone else?”
You know your job drains your soul, but you can’t quit because “what about the mortgage?”
You know that degree will put you in debt for something you don’t want, but you take it anyway because “what if I can’t get a job without it?”

Fear convinces you that known misery is safer than unknown possibility.

So along with awareness, you need to work on your fear as well. But that’s something we’ll cover in other articles.

Breaking free requires more than just awareness

So with awareness, you need to work on your fear as well. Understanding who profits from your choices is just the first step.

The real challenge isn’t recognizing the system - it’s having the courage to act differently despite the fear.

Most people stay trapped not because they don’t see the cage, but because opening the door feels too scary. They know their job is meaningless, their relationship is dead, their lifestyle is killing them slowly - but they choose familiar misery over uncertain freedom.

This is why awareness alone isn’t enough. You need to actively work on the fear that keeps you following society’s script instead of writing your own.

The system counts on your fear. It needs you worried about bills, status, and safety so you’ll keep playing by rules that benefit others, not you.

Conclusion

My friend, who spent 8 years of savings on his sister’s wedding, is still working the same job he hates, still worried about what people think, still following the same script that made him sacrifice his future for appearances.

He’s not alone. Millions of people are trapped in this cycle, optimizing for safety while their souls slowly die.

The system works perfectly - for everyone except you.

It keeps you afraid, busy, and focused on survival.

But now you know the game. You see how society programs you to choose security over happiness, how capitalism exploits your survival instincts, how fear keeps you trapped even when you recognize the cage.

The question isn’t whether you’ll continue playing by their rules. The question is: when will you start writing your own?

Because the life you’re living right now - the one society handed you - isn’t the only option. It’s just the safest one.

And safe isn’t living. It’s just existing.

The psychology behind why good stories are so memorable

2025-06-28T13:35:37+00:00

I was nine when I first noticed something strange about my mother.

Every time she watched an emotional scene in a movie, tears would stream down her face. I stared at her, confused. “Why is Mom crying at a box that shows moving pictures?” I couldn’t understand how flickering images on a screen could make a real person feel real emotions.

Fast forward to last month. My friend insisted I watch Money Heist. “Just one episode,” he said. Five days later, I’d binged all five seasons. I ignored work deadlines. I declined my girlfriend’s calls. I was completely absorbed by fictional characters I’d never met.

Now I understand what happened to my mother. And what happened to me. And what happens every time a story captures your mind.

Stories don’t just entertain us. They rewire our brains and create lasting memories through specific psychological mechanisms. The science behind why we remember some stories forever while forgetting others is both fascinating and practical.

How Emotions Make Stories Stick

qbi.uq.edu.au

When something emotional happens, your amygdala (your brain’s alarm system) sends an “alert signal” throughout your entire brain. This emotional arousal acts like a highlighter, marking that memory as “extremely important.”

Donald Miller, author of the bestselling book “Building a Storybrand,” has explicitly talked about this emotional connection in storytelling. He runs workshops teaching businesses how to use story frameworks precisely because emotional stories get remembered while facts get forgotten.

The hippocampus of your brain filters memory when you’re sleeping, removing unwanted memories that are unimportant. But emotional memories? Those get preserved. That’s why you remember your first heartbreak in vivid detail but can’t recall what you had for lunch three days ago.

This is exactly why Money Heist captured me so completely. Each episode ended with an emotional cliffhanger, triggering my amygdala and ensuring I couldn’t forget what happened next.

But emotional memory formation is just the beginning. Something even more fascinating happens when multiple people hear the same story.

The brain synchronization effect

Uri Hasson and his colleagues at Princeton University discovered something remarkable about story memory. When people listen to the same story, their brains literally synchronize. Different individuals’ neural activity rises and falls in perfect harmony.

In one groundbreaking experiment, Greg J. Stephens, Lauren J. Silbert, and Uri Hasson recorded brain responses of a woman telling a story about her prom and those of people listening to her. The researchers then tested the listeners’ comprehension of the story.

The recordings showed that the listeners’ brains started to “couple” with the speaker’s brain. The stronger the resemblance was, the higher the listener’s comprehension and memory of the story.

Stories don’t just transfer information. They create temporary mind melds that enhance memory formation through what researchers call “speaker-listener neural coupling.”

This brain synchronization effect reveals something deeper about human psychology. But before we understood neural coupling, scientists discovered that emotions themselves spread between people like contagions.

Emotional contagion and memory formation

From January 11 to 18, 2012, Facebook manipulated the news feeds of over half a million users without their knowledge. Some users saw positive posts while others encountered negative posts.

The result? Users who saw positive posts created more positive content themselves. Those exposed to negative posts wrote more negative messages. Facebook had proven that emotions transfer between brains, and this emotional transfer creates lasting memories.

Why does this happen? As Tali Sharot explains in “The Influential Mind,” our brains are designed to transmit emotions quickly because emotions often convey important survival information about our environment.

Research timeline from the mother-infant stress contagion study by Wendy Berry Mendes, showing how emotions transfer between brains even without direct communication

When you feel fear, I’m more likely to feel fear too, causing me to scan for danger. This emotional contagion happens rapidly, before we even have the opportunity to think things over. And these emotionally charged moments create the strongest memories.

The emotional transfer between brains is powerful, but there’s a chemical component that makes these shared emotional experiences stick in memory.

The chemical memory boost

When you hear an emotionally resonant story, your brain releases oxytocin. Research shows this hormone doesn’t just make you care about characters. Oxytocin enhances memory consolidation, making stories more likely to stick in long-term memory.

Lauri Nummenmaa and colleagues found that emotions promote brain synchronization by automatically allocating everyone’s attention in the same direction and generating similar psychological states. Their research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that emotion promotes brain synchronization, which strengthens memory formation.

When researchers showed participants emotionally charged films, up to 30% of their brain activity synchronized with other viewers. During emotional peaks like explosions or plot twists, hundreds of strangers’ minds literally remembered together.

While brain synchronization and chemical releases explain part of story memorability, there’s an even more fundamental mechanism at work in your neural hardware.

Mirror neurons and embodied memory

Italian researchers at the University of Parma accidentally discovered why stories create such vivid memories. While studying a monkey’s motor control, they noticed something strange: when the monkey watched a researcher eat ice cream, its brain lit up as if it was eating the ice cream itself.

They had discovered mirror neurons. These brain cells fire both when you perform an action and when you watch someone else perform it. Mirror neurons don’t just make you experience stories. They create embodied memories that feel like your own experiences.

When you read about a character running, your motor cortex activates. When they feel pain, your pain centers light up. As research shows, whether we see a movie or read a story, the same thing happens. We activate the sensation as if we’re experiencing it ourselves.

Understanding mirror neurons leads to a surprising discovery about story structure and memorability.

The cognitive load effect on story memory

Your brain has limited processing capacity. When stories become too complex with multiple plotlines and characters, they create what psychologists call “cognitive overload.” This forces your brain to work harder on comprehension, leaving fewer resources for emotional processing and memory formation.

Research shows that when cognitive load increases, the emotional centers of the brain become less active. Since emotion is the primary driver of memory formation, complex stories that overwhelm your processing capacity actually become less memorable, not more.

This explains why the most memorable stories throughout history follow simple, clear structures. They free up mental resources to focus on emotional engagement rather than plot tracking.

Now that we understand the individual mechanisms, let’s look at how researchers have studied these effects in controlled settings.

The neuroscience of story comprehension

At Princeton University, researchers recorded brain activity patterns using MRI scanners of individuals while they listened to speeches of politicians. What they found was remarkable: while people were listening to powerful speeches, their brains “ticked together.”

The brain activity of different individuals went up and down in unison, bursting and quieting at the same time, at the same position in the brain, as if they were synchronized.

Synchronization was observed not only in brain regions important for language and hearing but also in those involved in creating associations, generating and processing emotions, and enabling us to place ourselves in the shoes of others and feel empathy.

This synchronization directly impacts memory formation. When multiple brain regions activate simultaneously during story consumption, they create what memory researchers call “elaborative encoding.”

All this research points to a fundamental truth about how our brains reward narrative consumption.

The dopamine connection

When we read stories, our brains release dopamine, the molecule involved in pleasure and reward. Cheesecake, physical intimacy, and even cocaine trigger dopamine release. And so does devouring a good book.

In the case of reading, dopamine is your brain’s way of rewarding curiosity, so you can learn hard-won lessons the character is enduring. This chemical reward system makes story memories more vivid and longer-lasting than other forms of information.

All these mechanisms combine to explain a fundamental difference in how our brains process narrative versus factual information.

Why Stories Beat Facts for Memory

When you hear a PowerPoint presentation with bullet points, only your language processing centers (Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas) activate. But when you listen to stories, neural activity increases fivefold. You’re using motor cortexes, emotion centers, visual processing areas, and imagining sensations.

This multi-brain activation creates memory redundancy. Instead of one pathway to retrieve information, you have dozens. Stories build elaborate neural networks that make them nearly impossible to forget.

The Bottom Line

Stories hijack your brain’s memory systems through emotion, synchronization, and embodied experience. They activate multiple brain regions simultaneously, trigger chemical releases that enhance memory consolidation, and create neural coupling between storyteller and listener.

This is why we remember movie plots but forget textbook chapters. Why personal anecdotes stick while statistics fade. Why the most effective teachers, leaders, and communicators are master storytellers.

Understanding these mechanisms gives you a powerful tool. Whether you’re teaching, presenting, or sharing important messages, wrapping information in narrative structure makes it 22 times more likely to be remembered.

What story has stayed with you the longest, and what made it so unforgettable?

Sources:

Donald Miller, “Building a Storybrand” (2017)

Uri Hasson, Greg J. Stephens, Lauren J. Silbert, “Speaker-Listener Neural Coupling Underlies Successful Communication,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107, no. 32 (2010): 14425-30

Tali Sharot, “The Influential Mind: What the Brain Reveals About Our Power to Change Others” (2017)

Lauri Nummenmaa, et al., “Emotions Promote Social Interaction by Synchronizing Brain Activity Across Individuals,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109, no. 24 (2012): 9599-9604

R. Schmälzle, F. E. Häcker, C. J. Honey, and U. Hasson, “Engaged Listeners: Shared Neural Processing of Powerful Political Speeches,” Social Cognition and Affective Neuroscience 10, no. 8 (August 2015)

S. F. Waters, T. V. West, and W. B. Mendes, “Stress Contagion Physiological Covariation Between Mothers and Infants,” Psychological Science 25, no. 4 (2014): 934-42

S. G. Barsade, “The Ripple Effect: Emotional Contagion and Its Influence on Group Behavior,” Administrative Science Quarterly 47, no. 4 (2002): 644-75

Jeremy Hsu, research on conversation patterns and storytelling

Donna Lichaw, “The User’s Journey” on narrative cognition and dysnarrativia

Are you making these salary mistakes that keep beginner designers broke?

2025-06-28T02:34:53+00:00

Will you apply for the job in the same company you left 5 months earlier?

When I finished my two design internships, I got a job offer from an agency. Since I was a beginner, the salary was 5x more than the internship, so I accepted the job offer and started to work.

But after working for 5–6 months, I doubted that I was not getting paid fairly, and it was low compared to the market. Anyway, I ignored my doubt and continued to work.

After one year, I got my salary raise, but the raise was not according to my expectations.

So, I left the job.

After 5 months, I applied for the same job in the same company, and luckily, HR called me on the phone (HR was an intern, so she didn’t know me).

I received a call from HR, and we talked casually. When she asked my expected salary, I said 8 Lakh per annum.

She said we have only 6LPA of budget for this position and cut the phone.

I was feeling dumb.

Because I previously worked for 1 year in that company in the same position, and my salary was around 3 LPA. Even after the salary raise, it was 4 LPA.

If you remember my chat with HR, she said their budget was 6LPA, and I worked on 3LPA for a year in that company.

The only thing worse than making a mistake is not learning from it.

I learned from the mistake, and this article is about why beginner designers charge less and how to overcome charging less.

Before we move, always remember:

“You get paid what you negotiate, not what you deserve.” — Ran Segall

Every designer wants a higher salary, so why do they work less?

Reason 1: Because they don’t know how much salary they should ask for.

If you also don’t know how much you should ask for, here is a small trick I learned from an article.

When you get the call from an HR, and if he/she asks for your salary expectation instead of giving the salary range, say:

“I have been talking with a few other companies. Can you tell me your budget so I can tell if it’s the right fit for me or not?”

That’s it!

Bonus:
It’s essential to have a range of salaries so you can judge by yourself.

This is based on my personal experience in India. It could vary depending on your education, location, knowledge and company.

If you’re a designer with a minimum of 1 year of experience, your salary should be between 4 to 5.5LPA in hand.
If you have 2–4 years of experience, then it should be between 8–12LPA.
If you have more than 4+ years of experience, you’re a senior designer, and your salary should be more than 15+LPA.
If you are getting more than the above-mentioned salary, then it’s great. If not, then listen to one thing.
Even though I am giving you these stats, my current salary is also 5.5LPA, and my experience is 3+.
I can get a good salary but, for that, I have to leave my family & friends and move to a new place which I don’t like.

So, don’t judge yourself if you’re getting paid less, just work hard & smart.

Reason 2: Fear of losing the opportunity

It’s one of the biggest reasons for charging a low salary.

When we are new and don’t have enough opportunities, we accept the offer, thinking that we will not get this opportunity again.

Don’t do it!

Just because you’re not getting a good opportunity doesn’t mean you should grab it at a lower salary.

Keep applying to as many opportunities as possible and find the right company that could pay you the right amount for your work.

Because if someone is paying you low for your work, it means they don’t value great design, and what’s the matter with working for a company that doesn’t value the design?

A small secret will help you overcome the fear of losing the opportunity.

Whenever a hiring person reaches out for a job, you instantly think that this company has many designers in the queue to work for them.

“Why would they hire me?”

That’s not true. I have seen hundreds of resumes, and it is always hard to find a good designer.

If you’re a good designer, the hiring person is also pressured to hire you.

So, ask for what you deserve instead of thinking they have many designers in the queue.

Take low-paying opportunities only if:

Is there any emergency situation, or
You don’t have any opportunity right now

Remember that something is always better than nothing.

Reason 3: Lack of confidence

I recently talked with my younger brother about why you are working on less salary.

Do you know what he said, “I feel like I don’t know much about UI/UX design, so it’s good to work on less salary and learn more”?

No matter how much you learn, something will always be left to learn.

The lack of confidence and self-judgment stops us from charging more.

How to know if you lack confidence and do self-judgment?

When you:

Compare your work with others’ work
Get lost thinking about your skill ,and judge your skill
When you feel confused and follow others’ advice without question
Don’t have enough work to show in your design portfolio
When you don’t know any design process

If anything mentioned resonates with you, it’s time to improve your confidence. Maybe we will talk about it someday, or you ask me personally about it!

I just want to say that:

If you know how to design products by understanding the requirements of the stakeholders, that’s enough.

You don’t need to know about a fancy process. You don’t need to review Airbnb.com or showcase every process in your portfolio. Just be yourself.

The summary

Being a beginner designer doesn’t mean you should ask for less salary. Learn to negotiate for your salary.

Overcome your fear of losing opportunity and build your self-confidence.

It will help you ask for a higher salary.

Remember, everything is just fluff. Knowing how to design a beautiful product by understanding the requirement means you are good enough.

Don’t judge yourself!

What’s next?

Connect with me on LinkedIn, where I talk about design hiring and UX.

Shoot your question over — email me .

I went from waiter to designer at VWO — Here are the 2 mindset shifts that made it possible

2025-03-21T05:12:14+00:00

I still remember those days of 2020 when I had just passed out of college and was talking with my girlfriend over the phone about future planning.

I can’t tell you about the worries running through my head about marriage, home, career, health, etc. I couldn’t sleep properly at night; my whole day was just wasted thinking about the future.

I still believe I haven’t achieved much in my life, but the best thing I have is that I work remotely, I have a loving family, and most importantly, I have peace of mind.

Things didn’t happen magically; it took hard work and a clear vision. I made two simple mindset shifts that changed everything….

Mindset 1: Be Obsessed

Do you know what separates us from animals?

You can give me 1000 logics, but here is the fascinating one: animals can’t be obsessed.

Yes, obsession!

When you’re obsessed with something, you think about it 24x7, even while doing daily activities.

And that’s what I did. I was obsessed with earning money online by creating some apps.

Although I didn’t succeed, in the journey of solving that problem, I learned a lot. Later, those learned skills helped me land a remote job with a good salary.

How to use obsession

Most people focus on their lack of skills, but skills naturally develop when you’re obsessed with solving a problem.

So, first, start with a problem you’re obsessed with solving, and then learn things as you move along.

I take problems as projects. The project could be based on my life experiences or my family or friends’ experiences.

For example:

I wanted to earn money online but had no coding experience. So, I became obsessed with learning about no-code tools and started building simple applications.
I found job interviews difficult. So, I made it a project—studied how interviews work, improved my communication, and cracked the code.
I struggled with my diet and fitness. I started reading about nutrition and health every day, and it changed my lifestyle.

Your love for solving problems can lead to a better life. Let obsession drive your learning.

Mindset 2: Don’t Do Things You Hate Doing

Have you ever had a scary dream and suddenly woken up, relieved it wasn’t real?

That feeling of “I never want this to happen” is powerful.

Use that same feeling in real life—avoid things you hate doing.

Fear is a great motivator—even more than rewards.

For example:

I hated being financially dependent on anyone. So, I learned digital skills to earn my own income.
I hated city pollution and traffic. So, I built a remote career, bought land in a village, and now live peacefully.
I hated the thought of being stuck in the same boring job for 10 years. So, I kept upgrading my skills to stay free.

Make a list of things you hate. Then, build your life in a way that helps you avoid those things.

Hating things is good for motivation, but you need proper planning to avoid that scary dream.

And you can’t do planning without understanding things, which brings you to the point.

Develop an Understanding towards things in life.

Put this on a sticky note where you can see it every day:

“You’re suffering because you’re not understanding. And to understand, you need honest curiosity.”

When I was starting my career, I didn’t have a degree, network, or money. I felt insecure.

But instead of getting scared, I became curious.

I asked myself:
“How can I become a good designer?”

I found free resources, practiced, learned from others, and took action.

More examples:
When working in a low-paying job, I asked:

“How can I earn one lakh per month?”

That led me to learn product design and digital freelancing.

When struggling to get hired, I asked:

“How can I stand out and get a remote job?”

I researched, built a portfolio, and reached out to people—eventually landing my dream job.

When you stay curious, the answers come. Keep asking good questions and keep taking action.

Conclusion

Looking back, I never imagined that a guy serving tables in local restaurants would one day design products for a global company like VWO. But it wasn’t luck. It wasn’t magic. It was mindset.

I didn’t wait for the perfect opportunity—I created it by becoming obsessed with solving problems and avoiding everything I hated. These two mindset shifts not only gave me clarity but also pushed me to take consistent action, even when things felt impossible.

If you’re feeling stuck right now—whether in a job you hate, a city you want to leave, or a life that doesn’t feel like yours—just remember:

It only takes a few powerful mindset shifts to change your entire path.

Start asking better questions. Get curious. And don’t be afraid to turn your pain into a project.

Because if a waiter can become a designer at VWO, so can you.

How to get a remote job as a UI/UX designer using Linkedin!

2024-04-22T17:15:03+00:00

I have been working remotely for the last 2 years, and working remotely is the best working mode, at least for me.

People often ask me how I found a remote job.

Honestly, I struggled a lot to find it. After doing multiple trials & errors with my portfolio, personal branding, etc, I find the job.

In this article, I will share how to use LinkedIn to find remote jobs.

What is a remote job?

It consists of two words: Remote + job.

So, remote means you don’t have to be physically present at a location.

Job means providing value (solving problems for someone) in exchange for money.

You may be familiar with freelancing, which is similar to having a job but with a few key differences.

When you have a job, you are required to work a set amount of time each day.
However, in freelancing, you work on projects independently, and the details such as time, location, payment, and effort are discussed and agreed upon between you and the client.

(Important) Figure out why you want a remote job.

Finding an answer to this question is mighty; I often meet with people who ask, “How can I get a remote job.”

Although my answer is simple and direct, life is not linear.

See, you need 100s of trial & error when finding a job. Sometimes, you need to use content marketing or sometimes sending LinkedIn DMs.

If you’re not prepared with strong motivation. You will stop working when a challenging hurdle will come in your way.

Strong motivation comes only when you know your WHY. I even wrote an article on Why I want to work remotely.

Below are a few of my personal reasons for finding a remote job. Please do not copy them:

I want to live with my family instead of living alone in a small rented room because living alone makes me feel depressed.
I don’t want to eat junk food for lunch anymore because my health is more important.
I want to save time on daily travel to work on side projects.
I want to live in a remote area away from big cities and crowded people (this is my strongest reason).
I hate office politics and want to avoid working in such environments.

So, before starting anything, find your WHY

Think about only remote jobs.

This may sound paradoxical to you, but humans want 1000 things at once, and that’s where you lose energy.

Instead of desiring 100 things, put all your energy and mind power into achieving only one goal: “How can I get the Remote job.”

Keep asking this question until you find the remote job.

Here is a simple diagram for you:

Thought –> Action –> Result

Now that the basics are done let’s dive into using Linkedin.

Let’s learn to use LinkedIn

Surround yourself with the right people

Don’t send connection requests to random people; connect with people from whom you can get value.

So next time, before connecting with someone, go through this checklist:

You are inspired by someone’s work
You would want to work with a company or other employees.
You would want to strategize with, e.g., Creating a course, freelancing projections
You see the potential for mutual benefit. e.g., job referral

How do you connect with the right people?

Since my goal is clear, I want a remote design job. For that, I have to find a company which provides remote work.

Search in the LinkedIn search bar.

Click on the search bar and type “Remote designer” without quotes.

Click on Jobs

A screen will look like this. Make sure the “Remote” filter is on.

Click on the company page (In case you already want to work in a company, then connect with that specific company employee).

Click on people and start connecting with these people.

Send 5 connections daily to these people.

Start engaging to build trust

Once you connect with these people, you must get their attention and trust.

You can use the following method even if you’re not connected with them: just follow them directly and start engaging with their content.

By engagement, I mean commenting, sharing, or liking their post and sending DMs.

Lots of beginners got stuck at this stage. They got confused about what they should do.

Whenever you find the content of the person you can get benefits:

Give your perspective on the topic.

See how Casey shared his perspective on one of my posts, which got my attention.

Tip: You can do something similar but, don’t stop just there. Use the opportunity to connect and send DM’s to keep momentum going.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/rohit-singh-designer_ux-ui-designer-activity-7143522918734438400-m4W8

My friend used this method. She commented on one of the target employers.

Comment link

After a few days, she got this reply, and the whole conversation ended with a job offer.

She got his first full-time remote job.

Tell a short story that comes to mind when reading that topic

See how this professor shared my post with his own specific story; you can also do something similar to some other incident.

linkedin.com

ADD to someone else’s content or post it and format it in your own way.

I don’t have any specific examples right now.Last time, I read something on Twitter and shared it in a private Facebook group in my own words.

Within a few days, I got this message on my LinkedIn. I don’t need to explain this one further!

Ask a question that will get them to respond to you.

You can use this method if you find that the other person doesn’t post on Linkedin but remains online.

The question should be specific and exciting to the person; otherwise, they will not answer them.

So, keep changing your question unless you find something suitable to use on everyone.

Also, don’t let your conversation be buried under the heap. Just keep asking questions.

Bonus: You can send some resources, articles, or anything useful.
It will create reciprocity and make you memorable in a person’s mind.

Don’t forget to update your LinkedIn profile.

All the methods you have been taught so far will work better when you combine them with a perfectly positioned LinkedIn profile.

You can review many famous people’s profiles or even check my profile for ideas.

If you want my ideas, let me know in the comments, and I will write an article for you.

The strategy behind doing all these things was to gain attention & trust.

Don’t just rely on the strategies taught above. Use your creativity to become a trustworthy and competent person in the eyes of others.

Few things you have to avoid

Never ask for anything unless you have given something to that person.

Please make this rule as a rule of thumb; otherwise, you will hear crickets.

I also made these mistakes in the past, and whenever I did this, I never heard anything in return, so don’t waste your time making these mistakes.

Please bookmark this article so you can refer back and find your next remote job using Linkedin.

Ask your questions in the comments!

Are you working just for money?

2023-04-17T04:44:39+00:00

I don’t know how to start, but I am like most people working for money.

Nothing is wrong with this thing, except what will you do when you have the money?

I never asked this question in my life, and it is causing problems for me and some of my friends suffering from the same thing.

On 14 April 2023

It was 14 April, and I am writing this article on 17 Apr. Something strange has happened to me.

One of my friends got salary raise, and now he is earning around $3000 per month, around 3-4 lakh, because we live in India.

We got on a call for work and then started talking about the salary.

I was shocked when I heard that he was not feeling happy and satisfied with his life.

I was also suffering from the same thing.

I don’t feel motivated towards work anyone because the whole time, whatever I did in my life was just for money.

Now, I have the money but now what?

That’s the reason why I hate the thing which is “working for money only.”

Today I saw some videos about life’s purpose

I am following dankoe.com, where he talks about self-development.

In a video on finding purpose, he talked about finding something a big problem in our society and then solving that problem.

https://youtu.be/iHGvsDGj1SI

Here is the video. I am still figuring out how to find the purpose because finding purpose is the only thing which can keep us happy and motivated throughout life.

Get Inside Your Customer's Head with 'The Brain Audit' by Sean D'Souza

2023-03-04T08:26:14+00:00

This was the first time I visited one of the Seven Wonders of the World, the Taj Mahal, with my family.

Like every human on Earth, we don’t want to spend an extra penny on something we don’t need.

Hiring a tourist guide is one of those unnecessary things that we usually avoid, but this time, we hired a guide out of the blue.

The amazing thing was that there were nine of us, and no one raised any concerns about hiring a tourist guide.c

Was it a coincidence, or was the guide skilled in selling?

I would never have been able to answer this question if I hadn’t read “The Brain Audit.”

In the book, the author (Sean D’Souza) talks about seven core principles of the human brain: problem, solution, target profile, objections, testimonial, risk reversal, and uniqueness.

If you want to sell something, you have to talk about almost all of the things mentioned above to your customer, and they will buy from you.

In our case, as we entered the gate of the Taj Mahal, there was a board with the ticket price written on it.

As we headed towards buying the ticket, a person arrived in a yellow shirt and grey jeans (I’m not good at many things, but one thing I am good at is sensing a salesperson from a long way).

At first, we ignored the guy, but he said something that caught everyone’s attention!

He said, “Everyone comes to the Taj Mahal to see its building and goes home without knowing its history.

If you don’t know the history, what is the point of visiting the Taj Mahal?”

Then he reduced the risk by saying, “If you like it, then pay; otherwise, you don’t have to pay in advance.” After that, he showed his certification that he is a government-approved guide.

Long story short, we hired this guy and were impressed with his sales skills.

This guy followed the same pattern from the book “The Brain Audit.” If you want to build good sales and marketing skills, you should check out this book.”

How I heard about the book

While working as a website designer and helping my clients double their conversion rate, I started learning about copywriting to provide more value to the client.

As I started researching, I heard about Daniel Throssell, the founder of Persuasive Page. He wrote a blog about the best copywriting books, and “The Brain Audit” was the first recommendation on the list.

What’s unique about this book?

I hate boring books that talk about random things and don’t stick to the main topic. I even tried reading marketing books by Seth Godin, but I found them boring too.

However, “The Brain Audit” is written in storytelling, and all the topics are connected in a series.

The second-best thing was that most books provide too much information to digest, but Sean gives information in a series that is easy to apply and remember.”

Check out the book from here: “The brain audit.”

Don't Let Your Typography Hold You Back: How to Choose the Best Font for Body Text

2023-02-24T11:17:58+00:00

Typography is undoubtedly one of the most critical skills that every designer should possess.

From selecting the right font to ensuring that the typography is easy to read and visually appealing, typography can make or break a design.

However, it is also essential to note that you don’t need extensive typography skills to find a good body font.

While a deep understanding of typography can undoubtedly help, several online tools like paratype can help you identify suitable body fonts.

Additionally, it’s crucial to remember that readability and legibility are key factors when choosing a body font.

By considering these factors and using available resources, designers with minimal typography skills can find a suitable body font.

Thanks for reading!

What happens when you hit a mental breakdown

2022-11-20T06:43:32+00:00

I am 24 and never thought about writing this article, especially on this topic. However, in the book “The happiness equation”, the author has talked writing can make you happy!

So, I am writing this article to make myself happy and awaring other people who also suffering from a mental breakdown.

For the last 8 months, I was constantly working in a job, doing yoga and reading more and more books. In the beginning, I found a new world has opened for me.

But, after 8 months, I had a mental breakdown. At first, I thought it was depression or stress.

In reality, it is a mental breakdown.

How I am feeling after hitting the mental breakdown

Lack of appetite
Lack of motivation
Feeling of giving up everything you’re working on
Lack of self-care
Always thinking negatively, not staying in the present
Forgetting things
Over analysing anything
Fear of losing e.g. job, partner
and much more…

Why does mental breakdown occur?

Developing yourself and learning skills happen in stages. Before you can move on to the next phase of your learning & development, you have to get through a wall.

In my case, I was constantly working in a new job for the last 8 months, and I changed my job.

Suddenly, my routine get changed. I was facing new insecurities, fear and many other things. Which leads to the mental breakdown

How mental breakdown can affect your life

Every person’s body has a different tendency to react since I was unaware it was a mental breakdown.

I thought it was a symptom of stress & depression—Anway following things I was facing.

I forgot why I entered the room.
My stomach suffers from hyperacidity, so I vomited a lot and didn’t eat anything for a whole day. After taking some medication, I am eating a little bit.
My blood pressure was very high.
My head was paining, and I felt something standing on my head.
I was emotionally unstable, talking about stupid things with my parents.

What am I doing to solve this?

Earlier I thought it was due to job insecurity, so I talked to my parents, relatives, partner and friends about the issue.

And almost everyone said the same thing.

“You don’t know what could happen next, and nothing is guaranteed in life. You could be laid off from a permanent job also.

The only difference at that time will be they will pay you two months of salary if they are a good company.

So, don’t think about future things. Just do your best work, and if you get laid off. You can always find the next job.”

By family & friends

I found the answer reasonable, so I was controlling my feelings. However, these words didn’t help me overcome the wall completely (mental breakdown).

Somehow, after spending some time with family & friends. And talking with them about worries and fears.
Helped me overcome this breakdown.

One thing that also helped me to overcome the wall was this excellent book by Darius foroux, “Think straight”.

Final thoughts

If you’re not aware of a mental breakdown, it could cause problems for you, especially when you will assume that it’s a sign of stress & depression.

It took me around 17 days to overcome the wall, now I am feeling good and healthy now.

Reasons why I want to become a remote designer.

2022-08-23T14:36:52+00:00

I will not talk about design tools.

Neither about the design process, UI hacks or design jobs nor about books and courses.

Instead, I will talk about the remote job. My intention in writing this article is to let you know:

You’re not alone!

If you are also stuck in your 9-5 jobs. There are many more designers facing the same issue.

And below are some solid reasons why it’s the right time to become a remote designer at least for me.

Reason 1: My location makes me feel miserable

According to a report, 54,000 people died in Delhi and nearby because of air pollution.

Delhi, where I am grown up, holds the rank of the world’s most polluted city, with a size of PM 2.5 in the air.

Just to give you more facts, goosebumps a good air is considered good:

When the level of PM 2.5 stay under 5µg/m3 (micrograms per cubic meter of air)
But, in Delhi, it’s 110 5µg/m3, Which is 22 times more than a natural air

Air pollution is reducing my life by 10 years less, and I am not alone. There are 14 cities worldwide that are suffering from high air pollution.

That’s why I want to stop living in Delhi and other metropolitan cities.

And looking for a better place to live. So at least I can breathe the pure air.

It’s not just about air.

Maybe your city is not fighting pollution, but, hey, there are thousands of other factors that make us feel miserable about our location.

Like Overcrowded places, the crime rate, overpriced houses and hospitals, and stupid laws.

Reason 2: I don’t like to commute

Every day I waste 1.5hour in travelling and reaching my office and wasting exact time to reach home.

If you will add both times. I am wasting my 3 hours daily just commuting to for office.

Don’t sum up only commuting time!

If we calculate the time to prepare for the office(iron clothes, take a bath), prepare lunch, etc.

In total, I am wasting 4-5 hours daily.

Although I could save those times by l living in nearby PG. and hiring a cook to prepare lunch, I know.

But I don’t want to live alone.

I really love my family and friends and I can’t imagine how someone lives away from their family.

I talked with many friends who live in PG. Some people enjoy living alone, and some do not. That’s how it is.

If I don’t live with family, I will feel tired, exhausted, stressed and, most important, not creative.

I like to travel but not commute.

Reason 3: I want to build a personal brand

I don’t want to waste my whole life chasing and begging for jobs.

Imagine a situation when I live in a remote village, and the current company has fired me from the job.

The new company wanted me to work from the office.

You can imagine the situation. It’s not an imaginary situation; I had faced this situation previously.

After working for 1.5 years remotely, It was very tough to join the office.

A personal brand can save you from these nightmares.

What does a personal brand have to do with the remote job?

To create the brand, you must create content, work on the project you love, and start a small business.

You can’t do these things when you don’t have a remote job because a remote job gives you more time.

Reason 4: Freedom

I don’t think I have to talk about this point!

No office politics

Don’t have to deal with toxic people.

Work from a beach or a mountain. Who cares?

The summary

I want a remote job because

I don’t like my current location,
I hate commuting and wanted to live with my family
I want to build a personal brand
and I want more freedom to work from anywhere.

Thousands of designers want the same kind of life but are struggling to find a remote job as me.

This article was just to let me know they are not alone!

Next step

Let’s connect on Linkedin. And see how we can help each other.

How to get UI/UX job as a beginner designer in a typical Indian startup (that has <50 employees)

2022-08-15T07:35:15+00:00

Have you seen the LinkedIn post where beginner designers frequently post that they are looking for a job?

I am sure you did!

But, have you ever thought in the world of the internet, where thousands of senior designers and mentors are sharing how to get design jobs?

Yet, there are still lots of new designers who remain unemployed!

Seeing this made me very angry.

I don’t know who to blame because new designers keep following the suggestion of those mentors and senior designers.

And still keep struggling to find a job.

Stop following the advice of those mentors and senior designers!

I am not saying they are wrong, but hey, it’s 21-century things keep evolving. Maybe after 10 years, there will be no role like UIUX.

The second thing is, When they were starting out, there was less competition in the market.

Keeping that in mind, let’s find out how to get UI/UX job in a typical Indian startup.

Your resume was sent successfully!

A startup opened a job position for a UI/UX designer, and now the HR team inbox is filling up with hundreds of resumes.

Humans take mental shortcuts when they feel tired and have less time.

And that’s where hiring people use the shortcut to lower the number of resumes.

To do so;

Hiring person judge designers by their resume

This is a very secret trick, and I never believed in this thing until I saw it with my eyes.

More than half of the resumes get rejected in this first stage.

Want to know the reason for resume rejection? Here we go!

As a designer

We always love to use our creativity wherever possible. But, overuse of anything can backfire.

The main reason for resume rejection is creativity.

You will amaze to know that many designers share their resumes that:

look like a website (website layout in a resume)
Or some stupid layout with heavy icons and shapes
An unwanted case study in their resume (come on, who shares the case study in the resume?)
Using colours to get attention
Unwanted skills or software (e.g. Microsoft Office, coral draw)
No link to the portfolio (some designers still do this)

Your resume is your first interaction with the hiring person.

Make it a trustworthy period.

And if you are making any of these mistakes, please stop!

Because when a hiring person sees these resume mistakes, it instantly raises the bar that you’re an amateur designer!

No one wants to hire an amateur for their business.

Even though there is a slight chance that the hiring person will check your portfolio. But, you have already lost the trust.

This brings us to the next question, which is

How to write the perfect resume for UI/UX job?

We will talk about it someday!

Focus on your resume more than your portfolio (make it trustworthy and don’t use too much creativity)

Now, the hiring person opens your portfolio.

The biggest problem for hiring a person when they go through a portfolio is:

Almost all portfolios look the same.

90% are made upon Behance.net. There is no problem with it.

But when they click on any case study. All case studies follow the same process.

e.g. Showing problem, business objective, user flow, wireframe, then hi-fi design.

It’s a good thing to follow the process.

But, think for a second that thousands of other designers have done the same in their case studies.

Who knows, some of those case studies are even copied and pasted!

Anyway!

How are you going to stand out then?

Due to this problem, hiring people focus on the outcome, not the process.

What do you mean by that?

They click on your case study.

Scroll down to the last section of your case study and see what your final screens look like. e.g. what colour, typography, and layout you have used in your website and app.

So, If you were working on an app that reminds people to water the plant. You can cut down the process (show only 40% process and only 60% UI).

Make sure your UI is looking outstanding as compared to anything else!

Startups focus on UI and the final outcome of your case study, then don’t care much about the process.

After your resume, your portfolio is also get selected.

Again another problem arises, What if some designer has copied the UI work? Or has someone used the UI kit?

Sometimes your portfolio has showcased the app work, but the hiring team is not sure if you will be able to create the web application.

That’s where they give you the design assignment!

No matter how good your portfolio, they will give you an assignment

So, keep yourself mentally prepared for a design assignment.

Read the assignment carefully and try to solve the problem asked for!

A quick tip: When submitting an assignment, remember that the hiring person will probably be the company Founder, Developer or a new designer.

None of these people knows much about the UX process, so show the process, which is ok-ok.

Don’t go in too deep to showcase your process until necessary because none of the hiring people is well aware of the process.

Rather than that, show the final work. Which shows 40% or less design process and 60% UI work (like colours, fonts, layout, etc.)

Hurray, you got the job!

If you follow my advice, your chances will be higher than other new designers.

This brings us to the last question.

Why should you follow my advice, though?

For the last 3 years, I have worked in 4 startups in different niches! And this is the typical hiring process I found among all these companies.

So, every piece of advice which I gave you above is

It’s summary time

The market is full of senior designers and mentors, but their suggestions are vague because every business has a different hiring process!

Your resume is more important than your portfolio because it will help you build trust.

Then work on your portfolio case study (show 40% process and 60% UI work) and prepare for a design assignment.

While submitting design assignments (show 40% process and 60% UI work).

I am sure you will get your next job in a startup.

Next step: Apply the step mentioned above, and if you don’t get the result, email me , and I will help you land the job for free.

There are too many design processes; which one should you follow as a beginner designer?

2022-08-08T14:33:19+00:00

“Which song do you like most”?

Does anyone ask this question to you?

I am sure if you had answered the question, you already know how complicated the answer was!

But why is it hard to answer this simple question?

Don’t tell me because I already know!

It’s because you know in your mind that there are many other songs you like, but you don’t know which song you should choose!

That’s what happens when it comes to choosing the design process.

There are just too many processes in the design industry.

Read the article to know which process you should choose.

My struggle when I was new

When I first heard the word Design thinking, I got excited to learn the ins and outs of this term.

After a while, I came across another word, Double diamond.

And then another term, Lean UX.

These different names were making me confused.

Just like choosing a most loved song, I was trying to choose the most loved design process.

But, Back in mind, I always feel stuck because almost all design processes promise to bring significant ROI, easy to follow, empathic, etc.

Until I learned the harsh truth.

Never focus on the design process.

In the upcoming points, I will give you the three reasons.

1) People who create processes try to be thought leaders in their industry.

Recently I was reading the book “forever employable”, and the author of this book is Jeff Gothelf. He is the same author who wrote the book lean UX.

In his book “Forever employable”, jeff has written that if you want to be forever employable, then take a specific topic and talk about it.

By doing this, you will become an expert on that topic.

Why am I telling you these things?

It’s because whenever you come across a new process, someone on the internet tries to build his expertise with his material.

The more you will consume their content or thought, the more that thought leader will get profit.

So, next time you come across a new design process, remember that someone on the internet is trying to build their expertise with their content.

And you, as a designer, are not restricted to following or consuming their content and process.

With this thought, let’s move on to the second reason why you should not follow any design process.

2) Will this medicine cure me?

One day, my friend was suffering from heavy acidity.

She asked for some solution, and I recommended medicine which helped me get rid of acidity past.

After a day, I followed up to check his health.

Unfortunately, that medicine didn’t work for her.

You will often come across lots of design processes that everyone will discuss, but, just like medicine, some design processes will work for you, and some will not.

So, even if you want to use some essence of the design process rather than sticking to a strict process, be an opened minded designer.

Change or modify things according to need because the same medicine will not work for you also.

As we have finished the second reason, it’s time to cover the third and the last reason.

3) The imposter design process

When I was a new designer, I was trying to learn every single design process so that I could answer design questions in the interview.

Maybe this sounds stupid reason, but deep down, I was trying to overcome my imposter syndrome.

My mind always keeps shouting hey, you don’t know how to apply the design thinking process.

Hey, you know know what process is used by Uber.

These questions kept bubbling up in my mind until I got my first design internship.

What changed after the internship?

It’s been 3 years since the first internship, and I have worked in 3 startups.

None of the companies had ever followed the design process.

As a designer, we assume that companies care about the design process.

The reality is we just try to overcome our imposter syndrome.

Companies don’t care about the process.

But, how will we design digital products if there is no process?

I know how hard it is when there is no process. Without a process, it feels like you are stuck. Everything looks like a mess. I get it!

So, for this problem, I follow the

Erik Kennedy’s universal steps

Erik Kennedy from learnux.design has trained almost thousands of students in UX and UI.

Rather than following a process, he took the core of the design process and converted it into three universal steps.

No matter where you are in your design career these 3 three universal steps will always help you.

Hey, it’s much easier to follow these steps than the design process.

Step 1. Understanding the problem and who is the user
Step 2. Design a hi-fi prototype
Step 3. Get feedback and improve the design

Will these three steps be enough for complex software?

I know the above 3 steps look too simple.

But this is what I have been following for the last 3 years, and it has always worked for me.

Even I had used these 3 steps to design an enterprise-level cyber security software.

The Summary

Just like there is nothing like a most loved song, similarly, there is nothing like a most loved design process.

So, don’t stick to any process.

Whenever you come across a design process, you don’t need to follow their process because they are trying to be a thought leader.

If one medicine cured me doesn’t mean it will also cure you. The same goes for the process.

If you want to use some design process, be open-minded, and change or modify the process when needed.

And last, only designers care about the design process.

How personality can help you outstand against the competition!

2022-06-13T07:02:49+00:00

After spending five years in the optical industry, my elder brother decided to open his shop.

We started to research how the interior would look, what would be the shop rent and what location. Everything was going according to plan except for one thing.

There were already two well-established shops within a radius of 500 meters nearby our new shop.

The first one was (Sandeep optical, seven years old shop) and the Second shop was Bala Ji (which was around three years old).

Both shops had a good amount of sales and a good customer base.

We have only two options left: Either choose a different location for the shop or drop the idea of opening a shop.

Rather than choosing one option among the two, we decided to use completely another approach.

Photo by Mike Petrucci

How will you deal with this problem?

Imagine yourself at our place when you don’t have enough location options, and there are already two well-established competitors.

What will you do in this case?

We were also unsure what we should do until one day. I learned the power of personality one day.

After putting personality in our shop, we got 50,000(rupee) sales in the first month.

FYI On average, our competitors were selling around 100,000/m.

Getting 50K in sales for the first month is not bad, primarily if your competitor sells around 1 Lakh?

It’s been 3 months, and We are still selling 50K/m.

So, What causes us to stand out in the crowded market?

I follow two YouTube channels daily to keep updated regarding geopolitics (You see, I love geopolitics, especially after the pandemic).

Both channels teach the same content in the same language (Hindi), create their channel in one year of difference and almost have the same video length.

But, you see the no of subscribers and easily spot the difference.

khan GS Research Centre with 16.3M subscribers

World affairs with 2.23M subscribers

That’s the power of personality; I am not downplaying any channel. Both are doing good from their side. It just depends on the audience and what they like most.

So, What is personality? And how can it help you beat the competition?

I don’t know the definition, but here is what I understand from this word see: we all have favourite politicians whom we like and don’t like.

Why?

Because we love their way of talking, dressing sense, decision making, etc.

The same goes for even shops or businesses, For example, there are too many pizza shops in our area, but I prefer to go to only one shop because the shop owner always gives me a burger within 8min and the place is not crowded like other pizza shops.

It’s what I like about the shop, so you can say now it’s the personality of that shop in my worldview.

Personality doesn’t come. Naturally, we have to create it!

Let’s find out how to create personality!

Find what you like

When we started to think about things we liked, it was tough to imagine sitting alone in a room.

So, we landed on our competitor’s shop and a few other shops and started to pic things which I like, for example, Interior design, way of talking, educating, giving something to drink and listening to customer problems carefully.

What you don’t like

Similarly, I also noticed things I don’t like, for example, branding, talking rudely with customers, not educating them properly about their problems, hard-selling, etc.

Something special about you

Once you make the list of things you like and don’t like, don’t forget to add something special or unique about you.

For example, our uniqueness is:

Most optical shops are run by salesmen who don’t know how to treat the eyes properly with the correct lens, so we are experienced and certified.
We will refund your money if your problem doesn’t go away from our treatment.
We educated people through flyers and banners.

Once you have created the list of these things mentioned above, you are ready to stand out against your established competition. It’s time to apply the personality to your product or service and see the result.

You have reached the end. Thanks for reading…..

Still, reading?

I procrastinated in writing the article because I am working as a full-time designer and I got time only on Sunday. To beat the procrastination, I set the 1 hour on my stopwatch.

Now there is only 5min left on the stopwatch.

Need any help? email me .

Timesup!

Oh, here is an image of my new shop, CARING INSIGHT.

My elder brother sitting in the shop

What if you get fired from your job tomorrow?

2022-06-05T17:06:39+00:00

It’s Sunday, June 05; the time is 09:45 PM. My stomach is full of maggie (noodles) because my mom had cooked fish, and I don’t eat non-veg.

As I was taking rest and planning for Monday, I remembered the pandemic time when many people were getting laid off from their job. Linkedin was full of these types of job posts, just like the below one.

Although the pandemic was an exceptional case that started in 2019, now it’s 2022. I still see the same thing.

Coinbase.com had recently rejected the offer letter of many new employees, and now they are asking for a new job on Linkedin.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/danislou_update-on-hiring-plans-activity-6938339020737241088-FYiK?utm_source=linkedin_share&utm_medium=member_desktop_web

What if your boss will also fire you tomorrow. What will you do then?

Work on your Upstream

Imagine you’re going on a vacation with your friend. Both of you purchased child beers and decided to sit near a river bank. So, you can enjoy the view and beer.

Photo by kazuend on Unsplash.

As you’re talking with your friend, you hear a child’s voice who is screaming, “help, help”. Without waiting for a second, you jumped into a river with your friend and saved the child.

Everyone is happy now until you hear the same screaming again, and now you run to that child also. But, you find that there are many children in the river, so you decide to save all the children, and your friend finds out who is throwing those children in the river.

The above story was hypothetical and taken from the book Upstream by Dan Heath. The story shows that we are only saving the children from drowning in the river instead preventing the core cause (e.g. who is throwing children in the water or how children are falling in the river).

In other words, we react when something happens, but we don’t work on it, so the problem can be prevented before happening.

Here is what you should do?

Honestly, I don’t know the answer. I am still finding it as I am moving in my life, but I found a few things which worked for me.

I will share it very soon!

Why having an emergency fund should be your first priority (even if you don't think so)

2022-04-13T04:50:16+00:00

Imagine you wake up in the morning and your parents want you to leave their house. You don’t have a job and little to no savings. How will you survive?

Photo by Surface

Story of Prince

I have a friend who lived in Bihar(India); his name was Prince. He falls in love with a beautiful skinny girl. They enjoyed their life until one day, someone informed Prince’s father that he is in the relationship(Hurray!).

Prince expected that his father would accept the relationship. Everything would be smooth like butter.

Things didn’t turn out as expected because his girlfriend was from a poor family (If you go to any rural area, you will find that people are pretty conservative and care too much about their social status).

So, the whole relationship was turned into Rich VS Poor. So far situation was in hand, and he was finding some solution to persuade his father.

Suddenly one day, Prince’s father isolated him in a room so he couldn’t meet his girl. What Prince did next was irony.

You can’t even imagine it!

He escaped somehow, took his girl and left the city within a day. He arrived in New Delhi, where I live.

Now, Imagine yourself in a completely new city with your girlfriend. The city is full of strangers except for a few friends; you have to find food, shelter, clothes and a job.

How will you deal with this situation?

The same situation was faced by Prince, but the emergency fund saved his ass!

You can never imagine what could go wrong.

Just like Prince, your situation your life can also turn upside down within a matter of weeks. That’s why it’s essential to have an emergency fund so you can survive in worse conditions.

You can open two different accounts in different banks. You can use one like a savings account and another as an emergency fund account.

You can make the fixed deposit also whatever works for you. Only remember you have to keep savings and emergency funds separate.

Most people treat their emergency fund as savings. They use it when they find they don’t have enough savings to buy something.

Never do that…

Treat your emergency fund like a bunker. You use the bunker only when there is a nuclear war to save yourself from radiation. Otherwise, you stay in a typical house.

How much should I save?

On average, you can save a total of 4 months of savings. For example, if your salary is $100/m, your total fund could be $400.

We have reached the end. Hopefully, you have learned something

Why I was struggling to build the habit even after reading bestsellers books (like Atomic habit)

2022-03-20T05:22:09+00:00

I am the guy who loves to read books on every topic I struggle with, I was struggling a lot to build habits, and I was not alone. My friends’ were also struggling.

So, I ordered my first book, “The power of habit” by Charles d. I read and got some basic idea about how habits work, but that was not enough. I was still struggling.

Then another famous book gets published you may already know about it! “Atomic habit” by James Clear.

I read the book in-fact ordered one copy for my friend also. Honestly, the book was excellent. It gave me insight into how to build the habit and break the bad one!

Twist start from here

After reading “Atomic habit” I was still struggling. Yes, you can call me lazy, or I am not action-oriented, whatever you can think of, but the truth was I was struggling.

I tried to make things easy, attractive, satisfying, etc. As the author discussed in the book, it didn’t work for me.

Until I listened to a podcast where the author shared his story. Whenever he doesn’t feel like going to the gym. He still gets out of bed, goes to the gym, and returns within 1 minute.

Did you see what the author is trying to do?

unsplash.com

Time to reveal the secret

When it comes to building habits, most of us get too focused on outcomes rather than consistency.

For example, When people build the habit of going to the gym daily, they focus on getting a healthy body, biceps, triceps etc.

In reality, the goal should only be to develop the habit of going to the gym.

You may have heard the term “inconsistency is the enemy”? That’s totally true; when you develop any habit, it doesn’t matter what the habit is. You have to achieve consistency at any cost rather than the outcome.

My real example:

When I was developing the habit of writing articles, I tended to focus on writing as much as I could daily. This is what I was doing wrong. Because If I have to write daily, My brain will start to make excuses, which is why I struggled to develop the writing habit.

Now, to tackle this problem, what I did was I started a small goal, the goal was so small that my mind couldn’t find any excuse to do it!

I started to write one or two lines in my mobile note-taking app daily, and after one month, my habit was built.

Two biggest enemies of habit!

There are lots of enemies of habit, but when It comes to the most significant enemies, those two are:

1) Laziness

2) Fear

You can beat both enemies by breaking the goal into tiny goals so that your mind can’t find any reason to postpone it or ignore it.

Build consistency by achieving that small goal daily.

Summary

Don’t focus on outcome, focus on consistency by breaking goals into small goals.

Storybrand by Donald M. never worked for me (here is what's actually works)

2022-02-20T11:47:35+00:00

I have divided this article into two sections. In the first section, I will talk about why storybrand didn’t work for me, and in the second section, I will provide what works.

One YouTuber suggested me this book, “Storybrand” by Donald Miller.

The YouTuber is a web designer, and he personally uses tactics provided in this book with his client.

He suggested that this book will help your customer clarify your message and help you position your product/service.

At least, this is what I understand before reading the book.

Since There was no risk and I gave it a try. By the time I had finished half of the book, I had become Donald’s fan.

He was providing top-notch knowledge of marketing in a consumable format. Once I had finished the book, I started to apply the knowledge.

Since I am a web designer, I prepared a brand script and used it to write the copy for my own website.

Unfortunately, the brand script didn’t produce any result for me, and I left the idea using it and moved further to find something that would work.

Spending a few years, Reading books on copywriting, positioning and marketing.

And lots of trial and error on different books and courses. I found storybrand is still worked and did not work.

It all depends on the need. If you are in the market and already have some clients, then storybrand will work for you.

But, if you are just starting out and you are not sure 100% confident about your product/service. What problem you are solving, feature, target audience, etc., then storybrand will not work for you.

I am not writing this article to defame the storybrand; I am writing it just to help people like me to understand that the storybrand will not work for everyone.

It’s time to show you what works for me.

Seriously! still reading so far? It means the storybrand is confusing for you or didn’t work.

Before moving into the second section

I feel that this is the problem that exists with me. If you are reading my article, I would love to know if it also does not work for you?

Understanding this can help me improve the storybrand for new businesses.

My email: write to me

Are you looking to invest in crypto or mutual fund? I have a better option (forsage)!

2022-01-01T05:33:50+00:00

What will you learn in this article?

In this article, you will learn about my little journey and how I got introduced to forsage and other investments like mutual funds and crypto.

How does it all start!

I am not a financial expert. I am a 23-year-old guy looking to save and invest his money wisely to purchase my home in future and make some passive income, so I don’t have to depend on the job.

Basically, I want financial freedom.

Photo by Precondo CA

To become financially free, I started to research different things available in the market, and I was getting overwhelmed with the option And decided to try everything one by one.

I started with mutual funds and invested my 10K rupee in it. Since I was new to it, I was checking my money daily (in the hope of does it increased it or not).

After one week, I found no growth. Honestly, I was very impatient.

I withdraw my all money After the first encounter with a mutual fund. I learned a few lessons from it and invested in a liquid fund.

In the liquid fund, I invested around 50k rupee for around 7month, and the return I got was around 1k.

It was better than nothing but, still, I wasn’t happy with my return then I decided to look for more options.

My friend suggested a fixed deposit; I withdrew my money from a liquid fund and invested in a fixed deposit. I had invested around 55k and got the return of 1500 within 6 months.

Return was ok at least better than a liquid fund, but not enough to satisfy me because my need was to earn a good passive income, which should help me earn in the future, and it should not be risky.

The whole thing I shared above was the story of my two years, finally in middle 2021.

Crypto was taking a lot of hype, at least for me, so I thought, why not crypto? But the problem with crypto was that it is hazardous no one knows what will happen tomorrow with it.

I left the idea of crypto investment also.

A few months later

I started gym and met with a guy (prabath) who introduced me to a forsage.io where I can earn a good amount of money.

Prabath is a doctor, and he uses forsage as a passive income. He probably earns 50 to 80 BUSD (I will explain later what is BUSD) per day.

When I got first introduced to this, I didn’t understand the system and its workings because it is based on blockchain.

Rather than doing much research from my side, I decided to invest my 15k money because I got good bonding with Prabath.

After investing, I did nothing for one month except check my money daily in the crypto wallet, and I didn’t get a single penny from the forsage.io

Next month, I made around 49 BUSD in one night and guess what, I did nothing. The income was passive.

I was amazed by the return because 1 BUSD was equal to 80rupee, so in total, I made around 49x80 = 3920 rupee.

It will take me around six years to get this amount of return with a 15k rupee on mutual funds.

It gets increased later

Read if you want to know more about forsage.io

-> It’s is entirely based on blockchain, which means no one can steal your money (decentralized).

-> Also, there is not one admin who manages everything, which means no one can block your account.

-> It has nothing to do with bitcoin because all transactions occur in busd (it’s a stable coin and stay equal to the dollar).

--> It used BUSD as its currency. If you don’t know what BUSD is, it’s a stable coin and always stay equal to a dollar, so 1 BUSD = $1.

How does it work?

Think of a traditional MLM company or chain system where you have to make someone join you by selling medicine, clothes, or any product!

Forsage is an upgraded version of a traditional company in which you don’t have to sell anything.

The new joiner will purchase the slot(you can think of it as a place) in the forsage system, and whatever the slot’s price would get back to you.

For example, If you refer a person who spends 20 BUSD, you will instantly get 20 BUSD in your crypto wallet.

What if I can’t be able to refer even a single person?

There is a solution for this one also. I had earned almost 100 BUSD so far without even referring to a single let me show you how it works.

In forsage, there are two types of slots: one working and another is non-working.

Working slots are those slots where you will get money whenever someone you had referred will join.

Non-working slots are where you will get money when your upline refers to someone else.

That’s it for now. I know it is a little bit confusing cause you have any doubts!

Drop me your doubt — email me — and if you want to join forsage,

use my referral code https://forsage.io/b/z1x8xn

How tech companies are harnessing the power of "making it attractive"!

2021-08-28T12:45:48+00:00

In this article, I will uncover the secrets tech companies are using to keep their audience engaged with their product.

Let’s start with Facebook.

As we all know, recently, Facebook, Instagram and Youtube have incorporated short videos in their app To keep their audience spend more time on their platform.

As a regular user, I was also using Facebook and noticed the short videos. It was enjoyable to use at first, but here is the twist.

After a few days of watching short videos, I got so habitual that Whenever I use Facebook, I drew to shorts videos!

What made me habitual of short videos?

It’s the attractiveness of the short videos.
Every time I open Facebook 8 out of 10 times, they show me the preview of a girl doing something in the video.

Here is what I am talking about!

It’s not only in my FB; I have checked it in my friends and family members’ phone and found that the same thing is also going in their FB account. So, Before talking about Fb, let’s see

How LinkedIn is also using it to achieve their goal

To increase the completion rate of the profile, LinkedIn uses a simple but effective tool: The progress bar. Users see a progress bar that fills up when they add new information to their virtual profile. After successfully entering all relevant data, members also receive a badge – they are now “superstars”.

The image below shows the progress bar (on the left) and the badge that users receive on completing their profile.

Through this simple mechanic, LinkedIn increased the rate of full profile completion by 55%. Although this was the example of gamification but, at its core, gamification also uses the principle of “making it attractive”.

Let’s break down how they are using it in their product.

In behavioural science, making things attractive consists of two things. First is grabbing attention, then actually making it attractive.

Grabbing attention is very important. Marketers are hungry for grabbing people attention; the sales guy wants your attention to sell something; politicians want your attention to pitch you why you should vote for them.

Everyone wants your attention because everything starts from your attention.

When something has to stand out: in the language of psychology, it is known as salient. In fact, there is a bias which is known as salience bias. In simple words, salience means something has to stand out from its environment.

Salience can be increased through personalisation, relevance or contrast.

Other examples of salience are: standing out from the background, Changing the colour of an envelope, the use of images or video that can reach out to us on an emotional level;

Remember? When someone calls your name in a crowd, and you started to pay attention to that sound? Addressing a person by name can all increase the impact of communication or intervention.

On Facebook and Youtube, both of them are grabbing attention by showing a girl preview. Although it is salient but, they are also using curiosity here!

Because girls are everywhere, but we don’t pay attention everywhere, they show the previews in which girl is doing something, which makes us curious to click.

see how they are using salient and curiosity here

Facebook is also doing the same thing with their shorts video.

Once you grabbed the attention…

The second task is to make that thing, offer or product itself attractive, or at least persuasive.

Logically speaking, if something is attractive, it should provide some reward always. A reward could be external or internal.

Examples of External rewards are financial incentives, vouchers and gifts.

Examples of internal rewards are giving someone positive feedback or praising about their looks.

In the case of LinkedIn, they are providing rewards in the form of stars and showing the progress bar (I had shared the image above already).

And in the case of the Facebook sorts video, it is a variable and internal reward(enjoyment when watching those videos), A chemical realise in our brain when we get the reward, know as dopamine.

So far, we have learned that making something attractive should grab the attention first and then make the product or offer attractive.

One last thing, whatever the reward is, it should be immediate.

If you are reading this article so far, you may have noticed that whatever action users are performing, all digital products give immediate rewards in different forms.

Research on why immediate reward can change behaviour

Photo by Arseny Togulev on Unsplash

In 2008, a group of researchers from New York State embarked on an ambitious program. They had twenty-four months and $50,000 to enhance hand sanitisation in hospitals significantly. An intensive care unit (ICU) in the northeastern United States was chosen for a case study.

The unit was already equipped with easy-to-use sanitisation-gel dispensers, sinks in every room, and signs everywhere reminding medical staffers that they must wash their hands. Yet compliance was alarmingly low.

What could be done? The team brainstormed for weeks, after which they went out and purchased twenty-one video surveillance cameras.

The cameras were carefully installed in the ICU, pointing toward the gel dispensers and sinks.

The plan was to transmit the recordings live via the Web to India, where twenty auditors would monitor the actions of the medical staff twenty-four/seven to determine the rate of sanitisation.

Doorway motion sensors would alert the auditors in India every time a staff member entered or left a patient’s room.

The medical staff was well aware that they were being watched.

Shockingly, however, even though they knew they were being recorded, only one in ten staff members complied with the handwashing rules.

That meant that surveillance alone was not enough.

The team had to come up with something better. What researchers did next would change the staff’s behaviour almost instantly.

The researchers placed an electronic board in each room, giving the staff immediate feedback on how they were doing.

Every time a doctor, nurse, or other worker washed their hands, the numbers on the board went up.

Also, it indicated how well the current shift was going: what percentage of workers were washing their hands and the weekly rate. What happened after putting the board?

This setup scored almost 90 per cent (means 90% of staff started to wash their hand)! These results are astonishing.

They are so unbelievable that most scientists would treat them with suspicion. So the researchers set out to replicate their results in another division in the hospital and it worked!

Conclusion of this research

Even though researchers placed CCTV cameras and reminded medical staff that they are being watched didn’t work when they placed an electronic board showing current progress on the board.

It changed the whole thing cleaning of hands had reached 90%, and the reason behind that was immediate rewards.

Summing up everything

Making things attractive is directly associated with our survival. And tech companies are using it to achieve their goals, either by making the actual product attractive using visual design or gamification. Or by providing some a reward.

Hopefully, you learned something from it!

Thanks for reading

Supplement reading

“Donna Armellino et al., “Using High-Technology to Enforce Low-Technology Safety Measures: The Use of Third-Party Remote Video Auditing and Real-Time Feedback in Healthcare,” Clinical Infectious Diseases (2011): cir773;

thomas-lindemann.com

“The influential mind” by Talia sharot

“Inside the nudge unit.”

I still don't vote! Design lesson I learned from my own behaviour

2021-08-15T05:47:15+00:00

A few months back, I made a post on LinkedIn where I had criticized the government for not making their digital products user-friendly.

Here is a link: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/rohit-singh-designer_ux-badux-goverment-activity-6762687959121571840–9Nz

At that time, My problem was that I could not get my voter id card due to the hard-to-use interface.

After eight months of that post, I realized that it was neither the government’s fault nor their hard-to-use interface because I had previously used a much harder user interface to fill my college admission form.

So why I posted on Linkedin blaming the government even though I had used a much harder interface before?

I never asked for anyone help in getting my id card which I could do! Also, I can apply offline, but I never did.

Yes, it’s a pure example of a lack of motivation, but we can’t always blame motivation for our actions.

Tell me one thing do you need motivation to watch Netflix or use Facebook? No! because it’s so easy to use, you have to make 3 clicks, and you are done. No need for motivation, right?

In his book, “Choice hacking”, Jennifer L. Clinehens has talked about it.

Even in his bestselling book “Atomic habit”, Jamesclear also talked about it; here are a few lines of that book:

“When you have to build a habit, make it easy and when you want to quit a bad habit make it hard”.

from atomic habit

So many people had talked about it in different ways because it’s so obvious but, still, many people neglect it! The principle is knowing as

Make it easy

Making things easy are directly related to our survival because Easy things equal more energy savings! And You already know why saving energy is essential for our survival.

Here is a little story before reading further:

Ron was in his late twenties. He had decent grades at school and a job he enjoyed. He was already an assistant manager and growing fast. His employer, a large retailer, offered good benefits, including an excellent pension.

He remembered the details from when he first joined and from a seminar they did for staff the previous year. For every pound he put in, his employer would put in the same again, and the government added more on top. It was a no-brainer, and he knew it. The only problem was, Ron hadn’t signed up.

Like many people, Ron knew that he should start saving for his pension, which he wanted to do. He’d seen his grandparents struggle with money, and though one or two of his friends joked that you should ‘spend it while you’re young, he knew that a few pounds put away now would be worth a lot more in the future.

But it also involved paperwork, a bit of hassle, and it didn’t feel like something that had to be done today. Retirement was years away. It was something Ron could do tomorrow, a consideration in the back of his mind. ‘Yes, he thought, ‘I’ll do it tomorrow, or maybe next week.’ This week was, after all, a bit busy.

In 2012, something happened. His employer wrote to him to say that, due to a slight change in the law, they would now automatically enrol him in the company-sponsored pension scheme unless he indicated that he would rather not.

If he didn’t want to enrol in the scheme, for now, it was simple. He just had to ask to leave the scheme within a month, and he would get another prompt in a couple of years.

The ‘default’ had been flipped: from one in which Ron would have to choose to join a pension scheme actively (‘opt in’) to one in which he would be automatically enrolled on to the company pension plan unless he said otherwise (‘opt out’).

Ron read the letter and went to a short talk on the new arrangements. It was a bit of a relief. He didn’t have to do anything. His pension was sorted.

In short, more than 90 per cent of eligible workers chose not to opt-out. The proportion of the employees of large firms saving for pensions rose from 60 per cent to over 80 per cent.

I also have the similar problem as Ron have!

Even though it will take me 3 hours to reach to voter id centre to get a card, I am still not doing it!

Why? Because it’s not easy, I have to prepare myself, use a vehicle to reach the centre, wait in line, fill in the form, and get back home.

As you can see, there is a significant amount of friction here, as we all had read in high school about friction.

It is an external force that stops things to move. It’s a similar thing, except it’s in our brain(psychological) and stops us from doing the action.

I hope you understood the power of “making things easy” and removing the friction as much as possible!

Friction is not just a word it could change a human behaviour completely.

Consider, this story!

https://unsplash.com/photos/c82WpNI6A-o

In the early 1960s, the suicide rate in England and Wales began to fall. It was not unusual for the rate to fluctuate from year to year, so it went largely unnoticed at first. But from 1963, the suicide rate for both men and women fell for seven consecutive years. In less than a decade, the suicide rate fell by around 30 per cent.

Was this some excellent result of free love? But if so, why was this trend not being seen in other countries over the same period? What was going on?

The answer came when researchers broke the trends down by type of suicide. It turned out that the fall in suicide concerned one particular method: carbon monoxide poisoning. Until the early 1960s in Britain, one of the most common ways of committing suicide was to ‘stick your head in the oven’ – you turned on the gas, put your head in the oven, and the carbon monoxide in the gas would quietly kill you.

But in the early sixties, the gas source in people’s ovens began to change following the discovery of North Sea gas. Unlike the previous gas had derived from coal, the new North Sea ‘natural gas’ had much lower levels of carbon monoxide.

Putting your head in the oven with the North Sea gas(new gas) might give you a headache – and could put you at risk of blowing up your kitchen – but it was unlikely to kill you.

Even though people have other ways of killing themselves, now they have to find another way to kill themselves.

Have you seen the power of friction? It just saved the life of 30% more people.

Even a small amount of friction is enough!

In 1980, the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) introduced spot fines on motorcyclists for not wearing helmets. The primary motivation was to reduce head injuries, but it had an unexpected and dramatic impact in a different area: thefts. In the wake of the change, motorcycle thefts fell by 60 per cent and stayed down.

You might think that if a person intended to steal a bike, this change in the law would not make that much difference: they just had to remember to bring a helmet with them, or to steal one, too.

Riders often carried their helmets with them rather than leaving them on the bike. In short, the requirement to wear a helmet introduced ‘friction’ to the act of stealing a motorbike, with dramatic consequences.

100,000 reductions in motorbike thefts. Texas saw a reduction of 44 per cent in motorcycle thefts from 1988 to 1990 following the requirement to wear helmets.
Britain and the Netherlands saw comparable reductions in thefts of a third or more when laws were changed to require helmets in the 1970s.

As of now, you have understood that humans have a deep-rooted tendency to take the line of least resistance, be it cutting corners across a park, deciding what to watch on TV, to what to eat.

Also, we learned that friction could also be used for better things. It depends on the goal!

Now, Let’s see how the digital world uses these two basic principles to make the digital product better!

Paypal uses friction to help users avoid sending the wrong amount of money when they are in a hurry! By showing the written digit from right to left, rather than left to right!

paypal.com

Similarly, I talk about making things easy. Our surrounding is already filled with lots of examples! For example: When you want to text someone, just open WhatsApp and send a text. Oh, want! To watch a movie, open netflix.com or how about amazon prime?

There is no need to do anything hard. Also, I don’t think there is any need to discuss this principle and its use case in the digital world.

But still, sharing some of my favourite examples below.

See how mi is making it easy to read and copy the OTP for their user.

In India, if you want to get money in your bank account, you have to share your bank account details (specifically Account number and IFSC code). Normally, no ones remember their bank account number due to a long string of number.

For example, My bank current number is something like this 6000382749483. Now, tell me could you remember? No!

So Paytm.com - a digital payment app of India, opened its own bank. The most amazing thing about this bank is they don’t give you a random string of numbers.
Rather than that, they will assign you your phone number as your bank account number!

Isn’t it easy to remember your phone number as a bank account number rather than remembering random digits?

Conclusion

We learned that why making things easy and removing things is so important. These two basic principles are related to human survival and can a business to grow easily.

Also, we learned that friction could be an enemy and a life saviour. It depends on your goals and how you use these weapons. I hope you will use it in your next design project.

Thanks for reading!

90% of client make this mistake when they hire a designer or a design agency.

2021-06-20T15:46:45+00:00

I was thinking of writing this article for the last year, but I am not sure what was resisting me from writing this article. Maybe being a designer, I don’t want to offend other designers too.

Or maybe I don’t want to look highlighted by making the design community get angry at me.

The reason could be anything, but I can’t control myself writing about this because most people are doing it wrong—it doesn’t matter it’s an agency or a freelance web designer.

Until we don’t talk about it, we will keep making the same mistake again and again, especially the new designers who are starting their carrier.

This article is helpful for both client as well as designer.

If you are a designer, this article will help you understand what a good design is.

If you are a client, this article can save you a reasonable amount of time and money. As well as help you know who is a real designer and who is a fake one!

Are you excited to get started?

Let’s understand what I am trying to say.

Before talking about anything else, let’s talk about types of the design.

There are two types of design:

image credit conversion optimization experts

For Aesthetic purpose: Baby hammer(Right side in the image) represents good design to people who believe that design means “optimize for beauty.” although you can’t use it for hammering, it just for show off.

For Functionality purpose: The Stanley hammer(left one) represents good design to people who believe that design means “optimizing the product’s core function”. You can definitely use this for hammering purpose

Most agencies and designers design for beauty rather than understanding customer and business goals.

Wikipedia and craigslist is an excellent example of functionality over beauty in real world.

Below is the screenshot of the design made by an agency for their client. As you can see, it’s purely made for beauty (you can’t read the text correctly, colours are too distracting, the layout is breaking the design law etc.)

On the other hand, Below is another website(which sells tea), but they focused on making it functional, not beautiful even though it’s looking good.

More than half of the client falls into this trap. They see the portfolio of a designer or agency. And Rather than asking a question about the process and other business-related questions.

They end up hiring them by seeing flashy landing pages in their portfolio.

In my opinion, good web design means understanding your visitor and business goal, then designing the product considering both goals. This is the real definition of functional design.

An understanding goal doesn’t mean making assumptions; I still see many clients who pretend to know their audience. They suggest changing the website’s copy, and when we do the A/B test, the results never increases.

Be aware of it by “understanding goals” means understanding the goal, not making assumptions about customers.

I am not against beauty at all.

Designers who are reading this post may be thinking that I am here to make them realize that their work doesn’t make any change.

You are getting me wrong, my friend!

It’s OK to optimize for beauty if your insights(market research, customer research etc.) tell you that your visitor will buy more as a result. You should absolutely test with making the design beautiful.

For example, piquetea.com know to sell their product, it’s essential to make the design look beautiful to increase trust and product value in the customer mind.

At this point, functional design and aesthetic design become the same because we are thinking about the goal of our visitors and our business.

One of the most important things you have to be aware of is aesthetics is not a substitute for research and testing.

If you made your website without research, it is similar to the baby hammer shown above in the image.

Why not design for function and aesthetics in a website?

This is the most common question people ask when they hear about functional and aesthetic design.

Can’t we stay in the middle of both?

The question is entirely acceptable because who doesn’t love the beautiful design. But the problem is designing for beauty is like asking an “Athlete to run in a high heel”.

He/She can run fast without heels, then providing them heels will only slow them down.

Here is some reason why beauty is terrible for your design:

You have to write extra code for doing any editing and A/B testing of the design.
It can increase the server load and another technical issue.
Need more time to do the simple things. For example, editing a simple Wikipedia page is much easier than editing a beautiful site.

If you want to make your website more beautiful, ensure your designs are minimalist(I mean simple)—visually and technically.

Keep them elegantly simple and easy to update. And don’t forget that like the Stanley hammer—an excellent functional design has a beauty of its own.

And a good designer design for functionality not for beauty. Still have questions let me know here

Tools you can use to create a website & landing page when you have limited/no coding skills

2021-06-17T05:45:36+00:00

You are looking to set up your landing page or website but don’t know where to start?
Maybe you don’t have coding skills and you are wondering how can you still get success in getting a website?
Maybe you have heard some recommendation and tools like WordPress, Wix and leadpages but don’t know which one you should choose?

Internet is full of tools and recommendations that can make a new person overwhelming, obviously because they had never used it before.
So what I am going to do is give you some famous tools name and tell you how you can use that tool.

When I was starting, I was also a little worried about creating the website. I am a designer by profession, so I also end up with the static mockup, which was beautiful, but the client can’t use it.

They have to hire a developer for doing the coding work. This problem motivated me to check “no-code tools”, which helps create website and landing pages without coding.

Also, sometimes I have to create a website for myself and hiring a developer every time is a money-wasting thing.

Maybe you also have the same problem as me, so let’s start with the first rule.

If you don’t care about anything, just wanted to setup up a simple website or landing page.

These tools are required when you are in a consultancy or service-based businesses (like mentorship or teaching.) Where customisation is not necessary, you only have to set up your simple website to put your bio, services and write a blog.

Even if you have a simple business, you can use these to get the lead from your website. You are selling sunglasses; you can suggest people go on your website and choose one glass from there and send it names.

Below are tools that can help you set up your website hassle-free and within an hour, with an affordable budget.

Weebly.com

This is the first recommendation I had found with. It’s a simple drag and drop tool for building the website. You can also choose a theme according to your need and then adust the images, text and other things.

Here is how to set up your Weebly website

https://youtu.be/f8Jgp45wu2s

The problem with Weebly is I don’t like their outdated templates, and they don’t have many variations of the template. So I will suggest you look for some other options.

Wix

Wix is also a drag and drops page builder, but I prefer it more as compared to Weebly also it has vast amount of template to choose from.

Here is the video on how to set up your Wix website

https://youtu.be/4UuwYco8K7c

WordPress

Wordpress is also gaining popularity when it comes do setting up a simple and powerful site. Do not get confused it with wordpress.org.

Here is the video on how to use it!

https://youtu.be/vBcsj3LNtxM

I will still suggest you to use wix because wordpress can be a little bit harder for you to use and also wix has good customer support.

Weebly vs Wix

If you are a little bit confused regarding which one you should choose, follow the below video and here is a good article comparing Wix and Weebly. tech.co

My thought on the tools mentioned above: Although the tools mentioned above are straightforward to use and set up, they don’t give you complete control over everything. You want to access and edit some server-side file, or you want to set a redirect, or you want to optimise your website for SEO purpose.

Also, they are not built especially for one purpose it means all the features presented on these websites are very general. So that’s why I don’t like to use it in my workflow because I am the person who want’s full control over my website.

If you need a simple website/landing page but with a little bit of control.

If there will be any mention of control on landing page and website, it’s obvious to use WordPress because it’s a free, popular and beginner-friendly platform.

To manage your whole website Webflow is also an alternative but it require time and effort to learn.
It also gives you control over everything, but you are new and want a little bit of control of your website.
Then you use below mentioned things combined with WordPress.

Use elegant theme

You can use go on to the elegant theme, and from there, you can purchase an elegant subscription according to your need. Once you purchase the theme, you just have to upload that theme on the WordPress website, choose a template, drag & drop the things you want, update the content, and you are ready for launch.

Here is the full video, which will guide you properly.

https://youtu.be/FHWCiNmh9DA

Themeforest

You can also buy your theme from themeforest.com; that’s a straightforward process. Once you buy the theme, you can directly upload the theme and follow the author documented process to create a website like the way he is showing in the picture.

Here is the create video teaching about it.

https://youtu.be/e_1gjfl2aGU

If you are specifically building a landing or sales page and don’t care about complete control!

Think of the given tools as a Weebly and Elegant theme, but it is specially built for those who want to do lead generation, upsell, sell products & services, capture emails, and do A/B test things like that.

Leadpages.net

Since it’s coming with these types of inbuilt feature for capturing email and selling course. It’s natural to be costly and also not give you complete control over everything.

If you just want to sell something and lead generation where control doesn’t matter much, go ahead with this tool without thinking even a second.

https://youtu.be/MacHlfw6gBk

There are 3 more tools(click funnel, Unbounce, Instapage) similar to what leadpages is doing, but personally, I don’t know much about them, but you can learn about them from here. growthmarketingpro.com

If you need customisation and complete control over your landing page.

Naturally, sometimes we have to use things according to our needs for example: What if I want to use the paid font, but I don’t have API for it, this was just an example, but when you will make your advance landing page, you will also encounter these types of problem.

That’s why I decided to tell you about some of my favourite tools for doing it! Many of us don’t want to follow the conventional template because sometimes they don’t look good, or sometimes their content doesn’t fit in the pre-built template.

Optimizepress

This is the best tool in terms of creating a landing page and sales pages. The most important thing I love about OptimizePress it is built on WordPress. And WordPress already give you full access to your website(assuming that you have your own domain and hosting).

Things you can do with optimizepress:

Optin & Landing Pages
Sales & Offer Pages
Checkout Pages
Upsells & Downsells
Lead & Sales Funnels
Stats & Split Testing

Unfortunately, I didn’t find any good video on teaching how to create a website in optimzepress, but you can learn about it on their official website.

What I personally use!

Elementor(this is what I use personally)

If you think why I am not using the optimizepress over elementor, then here is the reason:

I had never heard about optimizepress until I created my own website.
Optimizepress is built especially for landing pages, not for an entire website.

These were the main reasons I didn’t use the optimizepress, but I will definitely take a look next time when I have to create a landing page next time.

That’s all for now I hope you will get value out it!

5 things to ensure before launching your landing page

2021-06-14T04:27:05+00:00

Start here

So, you want to launch your first landing page and seek some help from an online article. Right? If you are reading this article which means “you are worried and confused regarding your first landing page”, and it’s completely natural to feel like that because:

your budget is already tight. You can’t hire a professional
you don’t want to take the risk of losing your hard, earned money
you don’t want to make your first landing page a failure.

I am not going to give you a particular software or framework. Rather than that, I will give you 5 universal principles that you can use on your landing to get guaranteed success.

Doesn’t matter what is your niche and audience is.

Ready? let’s start

This article is not about tips & tricks and software recommendation and other copywriting frameworks. If you are expecting those things, then you can check this article.

Ask your self do you really need a landing page?

This question might look very easy at its surface, but you will find what I am trying to say if you dig deeper.

Fall in love with the problem, not the solution

Suppose you need an online place where you just want to capture the customer email of your customer and want them to send your free ebook.

And You decided to build a landing page for it but did you ask that Do I really need a landing page for this problem?

Maybe you can signup for the Typeform to capture your customer email and then use Zapier API to fetch that stored email in the Typeform database and deliver them your free ebook.

Maybe you can use Mailchimp to create a landing page and directly capture and deliver your ebook without any worries?

Doesn’t matter which method you use. I am trying to say that one problem can have many solutions, so don’t permanently settle down with the first solution. Instead, try to find different alternatives to one problem.

It can definitely save you a lot of money and time.

What is your goal from the landing page!

This one is crucial for a landing page because if you don’t know your goal of creating the landing page, everything is just a waste of time and money.

Let’s talk about how to set up your goal properly:

Suppose you are selling a course on “how to design a website in photoshop”, so what will be your main goal? Obviously getting more sales, right?

But sometimes, goals are extensive due to which people feel lost, so once you set the goal, you have to set smaller goals that we call objectives. So basically, we are only breaking the goals into smaller and achievable form.

For the above course, our objective will be “customer has to click on the buy now and complete their purchase”.

Hope you understand how to set a goal.

Important: “I want to make this landing page beautiful is an opinion rather than a goal, “ so be very conscious when setting the goal.

A little secret: A goal is measurable, but opinion is not.

Let’s set a more intelligent goal.

Anatomy of a more intelligent goal is:

It should be Specific (I want 5 sales in 24 hours).
Measurable (I want to make my landing page beautiful, it is not measurable, I want people to click on the button).
Achievable (don’t set an unwanted limit for the goal, like I want 200 sales of my course in one day, rather than it will be much better to start from 20).
Results-focused (there should be 5 sales today).
Time-bound (time limit is necessary like a week, day or month to avoid burnout).

e.g. By the ending (time-bound). I want (put your objective here) with (output or result).

By the ending of 31 May. I want people to click on the button and complete their purchase to get 5 sales in a day.

The landing page should have a good copy.

This one is unexceptional. You have to do it right at any cost. Doesn’t how beautiful the landing page you have or which software you are using.

Doesn’t matter how good or bad your product or service is.

“Only words sales” remember it or write somewhere!

Nothing will work if your website didn’t write correctly to address your user problem.

Sometimes it’s tough to hire a professional copywriter because a good copywriter also charges a good amount of money since it’s your first landing page. And You don’t want to spend too much money on it.

In that case, you have to do it yourself.

The easiest and effective framework I know and personally use is known as the “story brand framework” made by Donald Miller. To learn more about this technique, you have read the book “Marketing made simple”.

I know it requires work, but it will definitely pay you off later. Also, you already know there is a price for everything.

Once again, if you can afford a good copywriter, then go for it.

Give good UX

A good word is as essential as a good user experience is.

For example, suppose you are reading the word on the landing page, but the words are tiny on the page. Will you be able to read it?

Or what if your webpage colour is very light similar to given in the below image.

Or what if your landing page is not looking trustworthy at all? Is it looking more like a website built in 20 century?

This UX related can definitely affect your landing page conversion rate.

I know that you are not a professional designer, so below are few things that you can do right now to solve this issue:

Make the width of the paragraph less the 750px
Use a colour that has a reasonable contrast ratio and weight.
Use the font-size 17px-18px with line height of 26px.
Try to put all copy on the pre-built template rather than creating your own new template. because you are not a professional designer, and if you will try to make things from your experience, you might end up breaking the design law, which will cause you problem later (it will also help you to save money)

Keep measuring your progress.

Did you guys heard this famous quote, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it”?

The same thing happens with your landing since you have written the copy for your landing page. You put the copy in the pre-built template, then you just have to do only 2 things before making your landing page live:

Install google analytics to know from where traffic is coming and how much time they are spending
Install hotjar to see live what people are doing on your website.

There is 100+ software that you can use to measure a thing, but hey, we are just launching right now. So we don’t have to care about those different options right now!

Even these two simple steps can uncover lots of things later in the process.

That’s all for now. Have a question? You can reach out to me on Twitter and LinkedIn.

The single biggest landing page mistake and how to find it & fix it!

2021-06-02T03:43:54+00:00

A little context

I worked as a freelance designer with small businesses(my website); I have done internships also and worked as a full-time UX designer. And one thing that was common in all these roles was: my job: to design a website, landing page, and SAAS app.

In my small carrier, I met with different people in different domains. All of them have a different perspective, but I found one common problem among all those companies, startups, and clients are: understanding “Customers Perspective.”

They care more about their brand and marketing. According to my, this is the biggest single mistake businesses make with their landing page. This article is all about understanding and fixing it! If you believe that you understand your user perspective better, then this article is not for you.

Let’s talk about the solution for the landing page mistake.

We all serve our customers in the online world, but very few of us understand our customer and their perspective. The reason is simple we got so involved in our product or role that we forgot about the other’s perspective.

You may argue that your job is not your job to understand people’s perspectives because I am a marketer, designer, CEO, etc. But, remember one thing whatever you are doing is directly or indirectly related to your customer. It doesn’t matter what your job is!

Let me give you a real-world example of what I am saying: Try to remember the last product you bought from amazon.

Ok! so let’s backtrack the typical purchase path.

1: You have opened the amazon app in mobile or website on your laptop/pc

2: Searched your product.

3: See price and reviews

4: (optional) if the product is costly, you may be watching the review on youtube and ask for your reviews from friends about the product once this step will be finished.

5: You will open amazon to see the price again, consider all the essential things for you, and buy it!

This how the typical process looks like! Right?

But there was the website our team worked on it(Can’t tell you the name)! You will be amazed to hear that they have 5000 reviews about their company on Trustpilot.

But they haven’t placed reviews on their product page. So, We analyzed the page, shoved the review into the product page. And that page was performed 80% better(with 95% statistical significance) than the old page(control version).

Suppose that rather than reaching out to us for increasing their website profit! If those guys had already understood their customers perspective. They don’t need us.

In fact, if you to understand your customer perspective and build your landing page according to it! Then your 80% work is already done.

How will I understand my user’s perspective? I am not a user researcher!

I know you are not a researcher, and you don’t have to be. This is the reason why I am writing the article. A little bit of common sense and empathy is enough! for now.

Think about your user as a human. They have the same problem and doubts just like you. They also don’t like ad’s and reading small text.

You can use below give simple steps to understand your customer perspective:

Doing this will not tell you everything about your customer, but it is much better than guessing about your customer sitting in an air-conditioned room.

Step 1: Find two people who are not familiar with your product. A stranger will not work because they will not feel comfortable with you. Friend of friends will work here, make sure they don’t know you otherwise they will not share everything going on in their minds! (due to bias)

Step 2: Find a peaceful environment. Invite one person to that place. Get familiar with each other so that they don’t feel uncomfortable.

Step 3: Hand on your laptop to them and ask, “Hey, there is a website selling headphones (you can use your product). I am not sure should I buy it or not from this website also don’t know how will I buy it!”.

Can you do it for me? Give them money so they can purchase for you.

Step 4: Open that website in a new browser(cache, history and cookies should be cleared), Turn on your screen recorder and let them do what they are doing. When they are in doubt or get stuck somewhere, ask them why you got stuck.

Step 5: Make a mental note about that problem, or you can write somewhere if you want. So you can use those things to make the fix on your website.

You can repeat the above process with five people who serve you as your audience. And you are good to go.

Just try the above given simple & free process and share your result with me. You can reach out to me on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Choice architect: how to present choice so people will choose it for better user experience and conversion.

2021-05-22T06:27:47+00:00

We humans have to make choices or choice in every aspect of life. Whom to marry, which carrier to choose, which college should I study, and many other things.

The same thing happens in the digital environment. The only difference is it is packed with much more distraction. For example, we have many choices for one product: If I want to buy a photo editing tool. You will see that there are already more than 15+ tools are in the market. And what should you choose and what doesn’t is very hard. In this article, I had talked about how to present and influence choice so people will choose your product rather than the competitor!

Before you move further

I would like to know why you choose to read this article rather than reading another article or choosing to watch Netflix or going for sleep? Maybe You acknowledge the 10-15 reasons, but there are still plenty of reasons you are unaware of.

Don’t believe my words. According to research, an average person made 200 to 300 decisions regarding food consumption on any given day (Wansink and Sobal 2007). So, If we are making such a tremendous amount of decision to eat food, then think for a second how many decisions we took to do other things(in this case, reading this article).

Anyway, we will learn how we humans decide if I talk more precisely, then we will learn how and why we choose options among other options(in behavioural science, we call it choice architecture).

But first, we have to put some critical equipment under our belt to take full advantage of this article

Let’s start with what is Nudge so that we can understand what choice architecture is

Nudge is about redesigning the physical, social, and psychological aspects of the context in which the decision occurs to promote the desired behaviour.

Nudge is such a powerful thing that even United Kingdom Prime Minister David Cameron recently spent £520,000 to fund the Behavioral Insight Team (informally referred to as the Nudge Unit).

This is done by integrating insights from social psychology and behavioural economics to overcome the biases that might be in the way. Last, Nudges are only external, which means we can touch or see them.

An example of nudge used in google chat to increase the probablity of reply.

What is not a nudge?

Most people still take the Nudge in the wrong way. They think if someone is using psychology or any behaviour economics, then it nudges. No, it’s not a Nudges. That’s why I decided to give an example of Nudge.

An example of what does not a nudge is:

The website Stickk.com, which was created by fellow economists. It lets people back up their goals with ﬁnancial or nonﬁnancial incentives. For example, if you want to stop wasting money on happy-hour wine, you can put up $100 in the website wallet.

If you achieve the goal, you keep the money. If you don’t, then you pay it, either to a charity or to another recipient of your choice.

At first glance, it will look like a Nudge but let me makes thing clear
This is not a nudge because it provides an incentive( similar to watching videos on Facebook or a smoker who smoke a cigarette that elicits dopamine in the brain).

It also gives punishment when the goal is not completed(in the form of sending your money to charity). You can see that we are not doing anything with cognitive bias. If you see it closely, you will find that nothing is happening externally. Which is a sign that it’s not a nudge

An example of right Nudge

In a Lake Shore Drive, a roadway. One particular segment includes a series of S curves that require drivers to slow down to 25 mph. Many drivers ignore the posted sign that states the reduced speed limit. They are either easily distracted by the scenery or cannot assume how tight the curve is(obviously, if people didn’t pass the road, how can you make assumptions), both of which may result in accidents.

By introducing a new way of nudging drivers to slow down, these accidents’ individual and societal costs have been reduced.

So, this how scientist did it! Immediately after passing a warning sign, drivers encounter a series of white stripes painted onto the road. Thaler and Sunstein describe this interface as a prompt that inclines drivers to slow down: When the stripes ﬁrst appear, they are evenly spaced, but as drivers reach the most dangerous portion of the curve, the stripes get closer together, giving the sensation that driving speed is increasing.

It results in alerting the driver insights to slow down. Wow, what a great example of Nudge. Is not it?

I hope the Nudge concept is clear now

Let’s understand choice architecture which is a core part of Nudge

What is a choice architecture?

It was coined by Thaler and Sunstein (2008), “that reflects the fact that there are many ways to present a choice to the decision-maker, and what is chosen often depends upon how the choice is presented. “

In simple terms, you can understand choice architects like a physical architecture of a building that affects the people who live inside it.

For example, I am a sluggish person who doesn’t love to do physical work. At the same time, I want to do exercise for staying fit. So, I instructed my architecture to build my toilet on the 3rd storey now.

Imagine how many calories I will burn whenever I go to the toilet from the 1st floor to the 3rd floor.

Before we learn the practical implementation of choice architecture. It’s essential to know about your target audience because sometimes it backfires also.

Enough theory, let’s talk about practical implementation

In an experiment, the scientists want to increase the use of reusable towel in a hotel. So, they came up with two different messages.

The first message was designed to reflect the industry-standard approach and focused the guest’s attention on the importance of environmental protection. Here is the message “HELP SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT. You can show your respect for nature and help save the environment by reusing your towels during your stay.”

The second message used social proof, informing guests that the majority of other guests do, in fact, participate in the program at least once during their stays participated in the towel reuse program.

Here is the original message “JOIN YOUR FELLOW GUESTS IN HELPING TO SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT. Almost 75%of guests who are asked to participate in our new resource savings program do help by using their towels more than once. You can join your fellow guests in this program to help save the environment by reusing your towels during your stay.”

Both messages get printed on signs and positioned on washroom towel racks. The results showed that the social proof sign(second sign) yielded significantly higher than the industry standard(first sign). Below you can see the stat’s that which messaged worked and which not.

Result of experiment

If you might be wondering why this happened, I published a PDF about it: Identify the right target.

In case you don’t want to read, then here is the crucial thing to remember. People tend to follow others’ choices instead of making their own decisions (good and bad) to reduce the cognitive effort when faced with too much information. It doesn’t matter that the information is online or offline.

How can we use it effectively in the digital space?

I am sure you knew about reviews and other social proof on the website and other landing pages to help the people choose your product. So, I am not going to give you those generic examples; however, I had found some unique and creative way to show social proofs, which are shown below:

Instapaper.com provides a number of their current customers under the “Get started for free” CTA to increase the probability of clicking on the button by reducing friction.

The same thing is doing by optinmonster.com they are placing the testimonial of industry thought leader above the pricing plans.

Mx player games provide the numbers of users who are playing the game so others can choose which game should they play and which not.

Be conscious of the environment in which you are presenting the information. As you can see in the example, 1 and 2 both are from the pricing page. So, It’s essential to minimize the distraction of that page because if the distraction doesn’t get reduced, users might end up doing something else rather than purchasing your product, so they are presenting the social proof in a very minimal way.

But if you see the last example you can see there are lots of things going on the pages because there are no one important option

2) We can design the environment in which our user make a choice

Our environment makes a significant impact on our habit and actions. And if we can redesign the context/environment, we can easily change the people behaviour.

For example, In research by Bandura and Walters (1963) have shown so elegantly, children tend to engage in aggression after viewing films in which role models act aggressively. In fact, the primary reinforcement for aggression is the act’s performance by the role model; the aggression needs no other reward.

Similarly, For two weeks, stereotypically French and German music was played on alternative days, and the amount of French wine versus German wine sold was measured.

Additionally, purchasers of wine were asked to fill out a brief survey, the results of which revealed that they were “unaware of the effects of music on their product choices.”

The results were quite surprising, more French wine was sold on days when French music was playing, and more German wine was sold on the German music days.

How can we use it effectively in the digital space?

Smashing Magazine is showing promotional ad’s related to UI, UX design when I am reading the article on topic of UX design.

When purchasing from amazon fresh, when the user checkout after adding the product into the cart, Amazon shows this screen to increase the probability of buying more items.

The most important thing to remember here is that you have to remember that at the time of presenting choice according to the environment, Make the choice salience. It means the choice should be visible and capture the user attention without distracting them.

3) Make your message easy to understand and engaged.

Below are a couple of ways you can apply on your messaging:

a) Remove the Abstract language from your copy

I am sure most of you guys don’t like Wikipedia articles, and the reason is simple it contains abstract words which are hard to understand for ordinary people.

Abstractions like these may be helpful for expert communication. But for most readers and listeners, excessively abstract language can be pretty confusing and, frankly, quite dull.

Example: I had googled what is “End-to-end encryption”, and here are the two results which I got:

When you use E2EE to send an email or a message to someone, no one monitoring the network can see the content of your message — not hackers, not the government, and not even the company that facilitates your communication.
End-to-end encryption (E2EE) is a system of communication where only the communicating users can read the messages. In principle, it prevents potential eavesdroppers – including telecom providers, Internet providers, and even the provider of the communication service – from being able to access the cryptographic keys needed to decrypt the conversation.

I guess you can spot the differences pretty easily so, don’t use the technical and abstract word in your copy.

b) Don’t use the numbers alone

It can be difficult for people to process highly quantitative information(like numbers) because the numbers are challenging(especially when they are big) or the domain is unfamiliar.

Research shows that numbers become more easily evaluated if broken into categories, such as grades or endpoints clearly labelled as good or bad. The same research also showed that labels facilitated information processing by allowing affective reactions to be accessed more quickly. Peters et al. (2007)

For example, newly proposed EPA labels contain information about carbon dioxide emissions, but no one is familiar with a “good” or bad” level of CO2. The labels try to remedy this problem by rating a given car on a 1 to 10 scale linear in CO2 reduction.

Rather than saying our product sold 232000 times, amazon is labelling with the word best seller

4) People need to feel in control about choosing the option

When I am talking about control, I mean addressing gut feeling, trust, and intuition.
Science has already proven a thousand times that without emotion, humans can’t make decisions. And It will be stupidity if we don’t address the emotions rather than just persuading with logical arguments and product features.

For example, suppose Rohini feels insecure about making a decision(like buying a watch). In that case, your messaging & product should be more about making her feel secure, confident, and safe than just showing about product features.

Let’s see how can we do that

Have you ever landed on a website that wants you to purchase something but your gut feeling is screaming and saying “don’t buy from this website”, or am I sure it is the right website to buy something and many other unwanted questions?

It’s because you don’t have trust on the product website. Now, there are infinite factors that decide whatever a person should believe on the website or not; I want to talk about only one of them, which is trust

Use of trust seal logo on the website where your users make a transaction can dramatically help you in build trust

Maybe the above paragraph seems not reasonable to you, so I included a survey from shopify.com where you can see that 75% of people didn’t purchase anything due to missing a trust logo.

5) Pros and cons

According to research, People choose between alternatives by weighing their pros and cons on different attributes, and choice architects influence behaviour when particular attributes are made more or less salient. So always highlight the best option

Best option is highlighted by “Best Deal”

6) Personalized Recommendations

Research has demonstrated that decision aids such as product recommendation systems can be highly beneficial to consumers, enabling them to find products that better match their preferences while at the same time reducing search effort (Häubl and Trifts 2000).

Amazon feed is showing personalized books

Same with this one

This is the low-hanging fruit that you can leverage at any time. It is used mainly by eCommerce companies, but now other tech giants like Facebook, youtube, Netflix, etc., are using it to make people stick to their platform.

These tools use algorithms that suggest new items based on what people have done in the past. Recommendation engines can follow two basic models of personalization.

The first one is based on products or items. Each item is tagged with specific attributes.

For example, If I search for the book “Atomic habit” since it has a tag of self-help, then an algorithm will find the other item with a similar tag and recommend me to buy it.

The second personalization model is based on people.

A similarity index identifies people who have attributes in common. These similarities can include tens or hundreds of variables to precisely match people to others who are like them in critical ways. Then the algorithm makes recommendations based on items that look like users have chosen. This recommendation algorithm says, “People like you liked these items.”

6) Reduce the numbers of choice

This is the most common tactic and currently used in the different domains, so I don’t think I should talk much about it because you can learn easily about it on google type “analysis paralysis.” The only thing which you have to keep in mind that don’t give lots of option mindlessly to your user.

Give them choice only when they really need it!

Bonus: 5) Limit your meaningless choice

Don’t show choices that are not helpful for the people. Not all choices are meaningful. While users may appreciate it if you give them lots of customizable options, but that doesn’t mean everyone needs it!

As you can see MX player is giving option which no one cares about

It’s not the end

Behavioral science is a field that is evolving day by day, and new research is conducting daily. I will keep this blog updated with fresh insights, tips, and tricks, but that’s all for now. I hope you got some value out of this article.

Let me know your feedback You can reach out to me on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Courses & books which can help you to become an excellent Web, UX, UI, Visual, and Product designer in 2023

2021-05-10T15:47:27+00:00

A little context

In 2018 I was started to play with web design during my summer vacation because I have to create a project for my college. But soon, I found my interest in web design.

But being from a lower-middle-class family, and lack of money, connections and guidance. It stopped me from becoming a designer, but a “learning mindset” helped me come up from those bad conditions.

Now I am happy with my job and life, and I also wanted you to be a better designer. By the way, I am currently working as a UX designer at a conversion optimization agency “Optiphoenix”.

My main reason to share this article is to make you aware of different books and courses which can help you learn design skills without wasting your time and money on random courses and books.

That’s why I had curated a list of my courses & books, which helped to make my design carrier. With every course, I will add my personal note about it. What I like and what I don’t like about it.

Note: None of the courses and books is affiliated; I am just putting my perspective. What I like and what not about it. I had not bought all the courses. Some are reviewed by using friends and peers course account.

Let’s start…..

If you wanted to become a product and UX designer

Learn UX design by Erik Kennedy

When I first saw this course, I was not intrigued. You know why? Because the Erik landing page was not looking awesome as compared to other design courses, let’s face the truth, visual design always increases the value of the product. Hence, the same thing happened to me.

Due to not having great looking page, I left the website without buying the course, but one thing that got stuck in my mind was the course curriculum.
Erik was teaching a lot of stuff which was very unique. As a newbie designer, I had never seen those things anywhere else.

After a couple of days, I subscribed to his newsletter because I like his blog post. The level of knowledge for a beginner was extraordinary and in-depth. This knowledge made me so impressed, And I purchased it.

Pros:

1. Everything a beginner UX designer should know has been covered in the course

Cons:

1. Expensive for those students whose currency difference are very high.
2. Lack 1:1 mentorship

Erik Kennedy has recently updated his UI design course in 2022. and I really love his content!

Digital psychology

This course is provided by the CXL Institute. It’s a well-known institute for research in conversion optimization and digital psychology. This course will not help you directly in the UX design because it is more based on psychology & cognitive bias rather than UX principles and process.

One thing in which this course definitely will help you is standing out among other UX and product designer.

We all know that UX is for human beings, not for machine and servers and if you know the underlying psychology behind human actions & decisions. You can also reverse engineer it and use it and whatever way you want.
For example: how they read, what type of cognitive biases can affect humans, then you can help them make better choices.

Honestly, I didn’t pay for this course due to weak financial conditions. Thus, I decided to take their scholarship program. If you are also interested in it, then you can apply from their website.

No pros and cons because it is an bonus course

Product Design (UI/UX) Master Course by Elizabeth Alli

I took this course very early in my career when I was unaware of UX and product design.
I found this course accidentally when I was a member of a Facebook group author of this course was helping many beginning designers by answering their question.

Doing this kind of act grab my attention, and I end up on the course website. The course was very costly for me, but when I talked with the author. She provided me with a student discount, and I started to learn from the course.

The content quality was good, and the videos were short and practical. But still, I will recommend you take the UX design course by Erik. Once you take that course rest of the courses and materials will be a bonus for you.

Pros:
1. 1:1 mentorship
2. Help you to build one real-world project for your portfolio.
3. An excellent course in terms of product design.
4. After giving you any knowledge, the author will also show it practically.

Cons:
1. Lack of in-depth knowledge of UI/UX process and principles.

Conversion optimization by CXL institute

This course is also provided by CXL Institue, and here is how it will help you as a UX designer. I found many situations where you will have to deal with quantitive data(Like A/B testing, statistics, google analytics, etc.).

I haven’t found any specific course that teaches about it using quantitative data and gives you a framework to optimize things. So this course will teach you about it.

One more thing which I want to add is, As a designer, many companies, especially small ones & startups. Businesses don’t just want a good UX in their product. They also want their product to be more profitable. So, This course will help you in that also.

No cons, only pros because it a bonus skill to have under your belt

If you want, to become a Web & visual design

Learn Photoshop, Web Design & Profitable Freelancing by Cristian Doru Barin

Before entering the design industry, I wanted to be a freelance web designer. So, This was the first course that drew my attention towards it.

To be honest, I found this accidentally. I saw this course on a torrent site and due to having a good name of the course. I decided to give it a try, but later I purchased the course because it helped me earn more than $1500.

If you want to be a designer and never design a single piece of app or a website, you should definitely check out this course. It is very affordable. One of the best things is rather than giving you design principles. The author will show you step by step to design a new website from scratch by understanding the client brief.

Pros:
1. Affordable for everyone
2. Give you some basics on how to understand the client brief
3. Teach you the basics of freelancing
4. My favourite (You will be learning to design websites over the shoulder of the author)

Cons:
1. The whole course is taught in photoshop
2. Don’t teach basic design principles and other small details like button size, which colour to choose.

Master Web Design in Photoshop by Cristian Doru Barin

If you are an intermediate designer looking to sharpen your web design skills and stretch to the next level. In that case, this course will definitely help you. Actually, this an upgrade version of the course mentioned above. Also, it’s a great course to teach you suitable lessons regarding design trends and how to create them.

No pros and cons because it’s a bonus with the above course

10k website process by Ran segall

I was introduced to the author of this course when I was learning web design at the thefutur academy. I saw an interview of Chris do with Ran Segall(the main author of the course).
He talked about how he charged $10,000 for a website as a freelance designer. Seeing such a vast about of money intrigued me, and I searched about the author further on youtube.
Long story short, I took his course. As the name suggests, this course is about the author’s process, which is personally used to create a website and charge $10,000 for one website.

Pros:
1. Practical and straightforward content
2. All aspect of the web design process is covered (like sending proposal and project management)

No cons found so far.

Funnel designer by Neel Sarode

This course is built explicitly for those designers who want to sharpen their visual design(for website).

I personally enjoyed this course because it will give you the process to design a creative, eye-catching website.

However, this course will not allow you to deal with the client like running strategy session, project management, onboarding etc. But, it will definitely give you the process to come up with creative ideas to design beautiful landing pages.

Pros:
Teach you the process of how to come up with a new & creative design idea.
Teach you some basics of design principles

Cons:
Lack of enough hands-on design exercise.

Just in case you want to see my creative work, click here.

Creating a website is not just about throwing images & colours and coming up with beautiful web pages. A website should be built to solve a business problem, which means we need a strategy to solve a particular problem. So I had already shared with you the course “10k website process”. This course will definitely give you the strategy to create a winning website.

I want to share another bonus course that will help you understand your audience, basics of marketing and teach you how to write online(copywriting). I personally used this course to write copy for my own website.

SELL WITH STORY

If you want to be a UI designer

Learn UI design, by Erik Kennedy

I had already shared one course of this author above yet. This is another course in which the author had taught UI design in a practical and in-depth way.

Personally, this is the best UI design course that I had learned so far in my carrier. So, I am 100% sure that this course will benefit you also.

If you are a completely new designer and looking to understand the UI principles and process from scratch, don’t think for a second. Go ahead and buy this course.

Pros:
1. Practical and in-depth lessons
2. Homework assignments
3. Example with real-world project
4. Teach you how to deal with client

Cons:
Videos are a bit longer (but that’s ok)

Designacademy.io

Laura Elizabeth, the author of this course, is quite famous on social media and among the client for his freelancing work. If you are working as a developer and looking for a short, practical and affordable course that will teach you how to design websites. Then, this course is definitely for you.
Even if you are a designer, this course gives you some practical tips and hacks to design a good-looking website. But, you are ok without also. If you have extra money, then you can check this course.

Pros:
1. Filled with practical tips & tricks for web design
2. Lesson are fun to watch and short

Cons:
1. Suitable only for developer
2. Don’t teach you any process to design a website

Shift nudge

I am a fan of matt d. smith(author shift nudge course) because I love his visual design skills as well his lifestyle. When I first saw his course website, It blew my mind completely. His website was looking very classic and high end.

So, My expectation with this course was also very high. But, unfortunately, this course didn’t meet my expectation. I didn’t find this course worth the money because whatever you can learn in this course by paying $500+ money can also be learned from the “Refactoring UI” course.

If you are a new designer and looking for a UI design course, I will recommend the “Learn UI design by Erik Kennedy” course.

Pros:
1. All the tips will be taught over the shoulder of the author with a practical example.
2. Demystify lots of apps interfaces so you can understand why it is looking beautiful

Cons:
1. Not worth money
2. Videos are very long
3. Lack of straightforward design process (This is what I was expecting more)

Refactoring UI

If you are intermediate designer who has learned the UI skills as well as did some real world project then this is the best content you should invest into. Personally, I learned lots of new tips & tricks can help in making the interface looking more beautfiul. So, without thinking to much invest your money in it.
This is not a course so take this as an addon with your UI skills.

Bonus

Some personal read book recommendation

Like most you guys I also don’t like to read books but here are some of the books which I had read personally and I learned so many great things from it!

If you also want take advantage then go and grab this book

That’s all, folks. I will keep updating this list from time to time as I will see other courses and also if there will be update in the courses mentioned above. If you have any doubt or question. Feel free to reach out to me!

You can reach out to me on Twitter and LinkedIn.

How 80/20 principle can help in to build better digital product

2021-04-04T16:39:48+00:00

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

A bit of context

I was reading the “universal principles of design” book, and in its first chapter author is talking about how the 80/20 principle is vital for software and apps.
But I found many apps are still breaking this rule, and many of them are doing good also, so I decided to write about this topic with practical examples and how can we leverage it for better UX.

A bit of the man behind this principle

Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto(simply Pareto) an economist and philosopher. He noticed that 20% of the pea plants in his garden generated 80% of the healthy pea pods. This observation caused him to think more. He thought about wealth and discovered that 80% of Italy’s land was owned by just 20% of the population.

He investigated different industries and found that 80% of production typically came from just 20% of the companies.

How Does the Pareto Principle Work?

The Pareto Principle is a concept that suggests two out of ten items on any general to-do list will turn out to be worth more than the other eight items put together.

For example:

I wear 20% of my clothes 80% times
I use 20% of my mobile apps 80% times
80% of revenue comes from 20% of customers
80% of sales come from 20% of sales staff

It is always not true that the number will be 80/20 all the times. It varies from context to context. However, the core of the principle lies in knowing that, 80percent of the effects generated by any large system are caused by 20percent of its variables.

Real-world example:

Let’s see why what is wrong and what is right!

Imagine yourself as you are using a payment and answer my question.

What you do mostly with your app?

Here is my answer but I think my answer your answer will also similar to my answer.

I use my app for:

Sending someone money
Checking my bank account balance
Mobile and some other recharge
Credit card payment
Paying my bills water and electricity

Now,revert back to above image and compare both image side by side and see which had listed most frequently used feature in their app.

Another example

Now again think for a second as a user and tell me how many features do you use which are layed out on the bottom screen?

May be you will use one or two features then why the developers are putting those features on the screen?

Again in last I want to say 20% features are used 80% times so focus on that 20% not on 80%.

Thanks for reading

Why I left using 99designs as a web designer

2021-02-03T14:36:44+00:00

I have been using 99designs since 2018, and there is no doubt that this platform helps me make some money and practise my design skill.

Anyway, in these three years of journey, I had suffered through lots of problems with the clients on the 99designs, and with the platform itself, I am sharing my honest review for the 99designs.

If you are a client and read this, take the below points seriously and try to improve those things!

The client doesn’t know about the UX.

Don’t get me wrong! But this is true with almost 90% times. I am saying this because I have seen in many scenarios if you tell the client that this will be a better and usable version of your design and your “customer” will love to use it.

They will think that you are trying to sell them or trying to win the contest and they will completely ignore you. What client only care is how something is looking visually and nothing else.

I agree that design should also look aesthetics pleasing but tell me one thing “If you make your product beautiful while ignoring usability” will someone use it? You know the answer!

Real example: Many times you will see a design in which font are not even redable properly because white text is layed out on yellow color. But, still client like these types of designs.

They always try to save money.

I want to start talking upon this topic by a real example, I was in a final contest of $379(not sure about the price), and I was about to win the contest.

But Suddenly, the client asked me to create the design’s mobile version as he did not already mention it in the description. I refused, and then client eliminated me from the finalist.

Let face the truth, We all know that getting a website on $400 bucks is already very cheap and not according to the market but even though client always tries to get as much as they want from the designer.

This is not a right thing and client should stop doing things right now

There are lots of free works included

This one is based on my personal opinion, even though 99designs is a good platform to earn money and sharp the skills, but when you lose the contest.

Your 3 or 4 hours of work get wasted. There is some gold contest in which you get some bucks when you lose the contest, but the condition is you have to be a finalist.

Rohit Singh — Writing

Why stress is good for you

What makes stress good for you

The surprising benefits of good stress

It boosts your performance

It strengthens your resilience

It improves your health

It enhances creativity and focus

How to tell if your stress is working for you

How to transform bad stress into good stress

1. Reframe challenges as opportunities

2. Focus on what you can control

3. Build your stress tolerance gradually

The bottom line

Society doesn't want you happy - it wants you safe

The survival programming that no longer serves us

The problem with living in survival mode

How capitalism takes advantage of your survival mode

My wake-up call

What wealth actually means

Signs you’re stuck in the system

Use these methods to become aware of hidden society rules

Start with what I call “profit awareness”

Then follow up with some simple questions (optional)

Even if you’re aware of society’s rules, that doesn’t mean you can stop your life from getting ruined

Fear makes you choose suffering over uncertainty

Breaking free requires more than just awareness

Conclusion

The psychology behind why good stories are so memorable

How Emotions Make Stories Stick

The brain synchronization effect

Emotional contagion and memory formation

The chemical memory boost

Mirror neurons and embodied memory

The cognitive load effect on story memory

The neuroscience of story comprehension

The dopamine connection

Why Stories Beat Facts for Memory

The Bottom Line

Are you making these salary mistakes that keep beginner designers broke?

Every designer wants a higher salary, so why do they work less?

Reason 1: Because they don’t know how much salary they should ask for.

Reason 2: Fear of losing the opportunity

Reason 3: Lack of confidence

The summary

What’s next?

I went from waiter to designer at VWO — Here are the 2 mindset shifts that made it possible

Mindset 1: Be Obsessed

How to use obsession

Mindset 2: Don’t Do Things You Hate Doing

Develop an Understanding towards things in life.

Conclusion

How to get a remote job as a UI/UX designer using Linkedin!

What is a remote job?

(Important) Figure out why you want a remote job.

Think about only remote jobs.

Let’s learn to use LinkedIn

Surround yourself with the right people

Search in the LinkedIn search bar.

Start engaging to build trust

Whenever you find the content of the person you can get benefits:

Give your perspective on the topic.

Talk about a problem you solved related to that topic and how

Tell a short story that comes to mind when reading that topic

ADD to someone else’s content or post it and format it in your own way.

Ask a question that will get them to respond to you.

Don’t forget to update your LinkedIn profile.

The strategy behind doing all these things was to gain attention & trust.

Few things you have to avoid

Are you working just for money?

On 14 April 2023

I was also suffering from the same thing.

Today I saw some videos about life’s purpose

Get Inside Your Customer's Head with 'The Brain Audit' by Sean D'Souza

How I heard about the book

What’s unique about this book?

Don't Let Your Typography Hold You Back: How to Choose the Best Font for Body Text

What happens when you hit a mental breakdown

How I am feeling after hitting the mental breakdown

Why does mental breakdown occur?