Aedge - SoundSage

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In conversation with Rajaram Kudli, an IITian, researcher, teacher, entrepreneur, consultant and advisor. Madhavi Nadig continues the conversation with Dr. Rajaram, in this part he touches upon AI, learning and personalisation in learning.

Use of AI and its positive impact on learning
His experience of starting a learning institute for unemployed graduates and how they became employable
How can online classes cater to the motivation of learning?
Personalised training with AI
Learning cannot be competitive
His method of personalised teaching as a teacher for his students
Personalized, compassion driven, student teacher relationship cannot be replaced.
AI is automated least common denominator of human intelligence
Self awareness, learning and unlearning

This podcast is brought to you by Adeptic Creative Labs with support from the team at Clearly Blue Digital.

Write to us at podcasts@adepticlabs.com.

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In conversation with Rajaram Kudli, an IITian, researcher, teacher, entrepreneur, consultant and advisor. Padmaja’s conversation with Dr. Rajaram covers a gamut of topics, from all his experiences through his life and his views on all things education in the present day.

Rajaram Sir’s background, education and experiences as an educator and his views on the current scenario.
Anecdotes from his days of being an industrial management professor.
His journey from Belgaum to IIT
Experiences of his Phd
Learning by insight. Engage with anything with a serious question.
His core values as an educator
Thoughts on what makes for impactful learning for adults.

This podcast is brought to you by Adeptic Creative Labs with support from the team at Clearly Blue Digital.

Write to us at podcasts@adepticlabs.com.

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In conversation with Geethanjali, a UX designer at Nference. Geethanjali talks about her work in UX and her journey from being an architect to pursuing a career in design.

Being an ‘artsy’ kid, chose to study architecture to explore her creative abilities.
Enjoyed creating interesting spatial experiences rather than just aesthetic designs.
Visualising a design and aiding in getting it built was a skill she had already mastered.
These were transferable skills that could be easily applied to UX design.
Similarities between architecture and UX design.
Adapting from thinking in 3D to visualise design on a screen.
Transferable skills from interior design to UI design.
UX design process followed by Geethanjali.
Projects that Geethanjali is proud of, that includes a project she undertook for the interview at Clearly Blue!
Advice for people aspiring to venture into UX design.

This podcast is brought to you by Adeptic Creative Labs with support from the team at Clearly Blue Digital.

Write to us at podcasts@adepticlabs.com.

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A few weeks ago, Adeptic Labs had the opportunity to conduct a workshop at Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology. So we thought of inviting some of their design students to share their experiences as design students. This conversation with Chitra explored -

Chosing design as a course of choice
From wanting to become a doctor, engineer, theatre person and knowing that they wanted to be only a designer
Challenges and experiences of staying in the problem space, solving fights with friends using a design mindset,
Letting go of assumptions while trying to build the right product
Research and design, having to observe people for hours
Being influenced by having a parent in marketing
Design is a continuum
Influences in their design journey through spiritual exploration, cultivating their own lines of inquiry, being influenced by friends and family and going back to them when they are stuck, influence of having a parent in marketing and the creation of impactful campaigns
unlearning at Srishti with a course on chaos and turning traditional learning on its head
How research helps in design, like a scientific mind
Engineering approaches have rules, designers work more openly
Theatre influencing design and vice versa, seeing design through theatre as reflections of the world we live in, actors and designers minds are like a begging bowl always waiting to be filled with anything coming their way, curating and creating experiences
What unlearning meant in their first year at design school
Their perspectives on what people aspiring to learn design should take note of

Jahanavi Goel:

An aspiring service designer with strong observational skills, empathetic approach, and ability to develop and deliver practical and conscientious solutions. Currently studying at Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design &Technology, pursuing Business Services and System Design.

Abhiram Jois:

Abhiram Jois is a human centred design student at Srishti Manipal institute. He is currently associated with the collective Design Beku and is working on a project called COWKI (Community owned wireless knowledge infrastructure) that enables communities to co create local knowledge repositories and self host meaningful digital services. He also did a semester of student exchange with The Glasgow School of Art where he studied interaction design. His areas of interest include UI/UX, design research, open data/software, HCI4D and ICT4D.

Rhea Mittal:

A 3rd-year student pursuing Human Centered Design at Srishti Manipal Institute (SMI), Bangalore. She recently completed a student exchange semester in Besign, The Sustainable Design School, France. And currently interning as a design researcher at IIT Delhi and has previously interned as a UI/UX Designer, Product Designer, UX researcher and Graphic designer.

Linkedin profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rhea-mittal/

Website: https://rheamittal04013ae9.myportfolio.com/

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In conversation with the marketing team at Clearly Blue Digital, with Chitra from Adeptic Creative Labs.

Aishwarya, Snegha and Sakshi talk about marketing in their own words. This team is a very young team of enthusiastic, creative and passionate people who share -

What attracted each one to the world of marketing
Spontaneously and in the course of work
Asking google, and finding out the why behind marketing
did DM once and learned it formally at Clearly Blue
Learning about marketing via home business and passion-driven careers
learning patience when getting those followers
being consistent
engaging with followers, building your network
Being consistent by
Making genuine and valid connections in the online world
Changes in marketing tools in the last 2 years, rise of automation
Marketing in a B2B business, seeing outcomes is a while away unlike B2C
Takes time for people to recognize a brand, how one presents their brand matters
Quality is more important than quantity
Tell the story of who you are as a business or product
Building a portfolio of a business
Challenges faced as a new marketing team
Helping new companies get started with marketing
Messages for aspiring marketeers
Learning through experiences on the job
Focus on the how
Being consistent flexible and adaptable

This podcast is brought to you by Adeptic Creative Labs with support from the team at Clearly Blue Digital.

Write to us at podcasts@adepticlabs.com.

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Continuing this series of Rarely Rational, we feature Padmaja and Chitra from Adeptic Creative Labs, examining experiences of Negativity Bias through various lenses. This conversation covers -

Why do we have a propensity as humans towards negatively charged experiences
How current banking applications evoke feelings of failure due to their design
Exploring aspects of inclusivity, accessibility, and putting the user first, to counter negativity bias as UX designers
Simple things people have done to enable the last-mile auto mechanic
Considering the user experience to be a memorable and pleasurable experience
Humans today have the potential to think positively and steer themselves out of challenging situations, yet they chose to dwell amidst negatively charged environments
Tips for UX designers
A powerfully positive statistic on cancer survival

This podcast is brought to you by Adeptic Creative Labs with support from the team at Clearly Blue Digital.

Write to us at podcasts@adepticlabs.com.

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In this episode of our Rarely Rational series, Madhavi Nadig and Jyothi Sridhar discuss why people love to look for patterns, and when they find these patterns they want to associate a meaning to them.

While we have heard of women shattering the glass ceiling, there is also a problem of them ‘falling off the glass cliff’.
Illusion of validity is where in which a person overestimates their ability to interpret and predict accurately the outcome when analyzing a set of data.
People think they have found patterns and are convinced only by those patterns.
Confident about the decision made by this perception.
Reasons for this cognitive bias. Identifying patterns is what the human brain is conditioned to do.
People love to look for patterns, and when they find these patterns they want to associate a meaning to them.
Example from Mahabharatha where Yudhishitira might have succumbed to this Illusion of validity. Yudhishtira agreed to play dice with Duryodhana & Shakuni after he won once. Why so over confident despite knowing Shakuni was a master of the dice?
Daily trading in the stock markets show instances when people fall prey to the illusion of validity.
Nithin Kamath - Founder of Zerodha said ‘How useful is collecting & analysing tons of data is a question I ask my peers. We have no data team at Zerodha as we believe it doesn't give useful insights…’
If you have a list of contacts, then you can’t market your new product to all of them. Position your product and figure out the subset of contacts for whom this product is relevant. Example of illusion of validity in marketing. Already existing users might not be the target audience to every new feature or product that is launched.
Interesting incident about how statisticians figured out how to reinforce aircrafts and prevent too much damage during the world war.
Illusion of validity in user research.
How Interpreting data when data is actually missing can lead to incorrect outcomes.
Avoiding this bias - by not always looking for data to tell a coherent story.
Seek out different opinions and interpretations.
Madhavi’s shares an experience at an Ad-tech company showing how data can change the perception of reality.
Which is safer? Flights or cars?

This podcast is brought to you by Adeptic Creative Labs with support from the team at Clearly Blue Digital.

Write to us at podcasts@adepticlabs.com.

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In this episode of our Rarely Rational series, Madhavi Nadig and Jyothi Sridhar discuss why courtesy may not always be welcome. Courtesy Bias makes it hard to get unfiltered opinions, since people may withhold their real views due to courtesy.

“Satyam bruyat, priyam bruyat, na bruyat satyam apriyam, priyam cha nanrutam bruyat”
Jyothi thinks this shloka aptly captures user researchers' expectations of their participants
If feedback is not honest or incomplete, then it's not very useful to the researchers
User researchers seek critical feedback
Purely positive feedback is useful only in boosting egos
To be nice and positive, people withhold sharing negative aspects while giving feedback
Family and close friends give raw, unfiltered feedback. Madhavi and Jyothi wish their target group did the same too.
Due to Courtesy Bias, users value being courteous over honesty in their feedback
Some participants fabricate opinions that they think will please the researchers
Courtesy Bias stems from cultural conditioning, a people-pleasing mindset, hesitation to disagree, etc
Madhavi takes all qualitative feedback with a pinch of salt and looks for broad themes
Jyothi tries to make her interviewees feel comfortable enough to share their thoughts openly
Madhavi suggests taking power imbalance out of the equation
Courtesy Bias could stem from introvertedness, feelings of Imposter Syndrome, paucity of time, or apathy
One may exhibit Courtesy Bias in public, but express freely in private settings
Closed polls may be better than open polls
NPS scores give you a sense of who's a promoter, detractor, or passive about your product
Individual user interviews may yield better insights than focus groups
It's hard to convey negative feedback without sounding rude or harsh
How do you handle negative feedback, if you get it?
What appears as Courtesy Bias, could stem from multiple other unconscious biases
Courtesy Bias is itself a form of Response Bias
Madhavi suggests explicitly disassociating from the product so that users won't worry about hurting your sentiments
Ensure questions aren't leading, so people don't feel the pressure to agree (to be "courteous")
Jyothi believes news channels have figured out how to use Courtesy Bias to raise their TRPs
Madhavi thinks the shloka needs an addition—don't propagate half-truths either.

This podcast is brought to you by Adeptic Creative Labs with support from the team at Clearly Blue Digital.

Write to us at podcasts@adepticlabs.com.

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This episode is a new one in our ‘Rarely Rational’ series where we explore cognitive biases.

Madhavi Nadig and Jyothi Sridhar talk about the ‘Peak-end rule’

Chinese whispers - a popular children’s game.
Psychologists talk about two kinds of ‘selves’. Experiencing self and the narrating self. Are we playing chinese whispers with ourselves?
What is the peak-end rule?
The peak-end rule says we do not remember experiences accurately. The way we judge our experiences is mostly dependent on what we felt at our worst/best moments.
People curating their memories on social media exhibit a similar behaviour. Where their experiences are remembered by what they felt at the worst/best moments.
Childbirth is a classic example of how a positive ending takes over the overall painful experience.
Even seemingly boring movies can leave you with a lasting impression if the ending was great.
Madhavi’s experience with UPI both as a customer and as a vendor.
Raising awareness about ALS with a trend called Ice bucket challenge as an example for peak-end rule. The peak of this experience was the person’s reaction when the icy water hit them.
A recent Shark tank India episode had people who pitched about their makeup brand and one of their customer acquisition strategies was to conduct makeup tutorial events at 5-star hotels with free food.
If the last experience about a product was negative, Peak end rule is used to mitigate that negativity by way of giving out humorous error messages and leaving the user with a smile.
Experience with doctors
Ratings or NPS scores need to be taken with a pick of salt. Reviewers most likely rate the service or product with their bias of peak-end rule.
Spin doctors - people who are skilled at doing public relations for celebrities maintaining their reputation in the public to hide any bad raps they might have received at any point.

This podcast is brought to you by Adeptic Creative Labs with support from the team at Clearly Blue Digital.

Write to us at podcasts@adepticlabs.com.

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In this episode of Aedge, Sushmita Charlu, a designer with a multi-disciplinary approach, chats with Madhavi Nadig, the CTO of Adeptic Creative Labs. It is a free-wheeling conversation covering Sushmita’s diverse body of work and her thoughts around industrial design, circular economy, sustainability, game design with recycled materials and designing for water equity.

Unable to choose between arts and science, Sushmita chose to study Design where she didn’t have to give up either.
She graduated as a Product & Interface Designer from Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology, studying industrial design and UX design.
Her mentor kindled her interest in sustainability with a book called “Cradle to Cradle”, which talks about moving away from a linear economy to a circular economy.
An ideal design is one which lives perpetually, maybe in different forms over time, but nothing is wasted.
Cradle, here, is a metaphor for birth. Products are (re)born with a new form once the previous form is obsolete.
Sushmita has found her ikigai in industrial design and creating a circular economy
As an industrial designer, she looks at products as a service to people.
At every stage from production to packaging to delivery, as an industrial designer, she considers how to create a circular economy.
India had a strong circular economy in the past, when repairing and renting products were the norm.
Pride in product ownership led to the collapse of the service economy.
Now, with renewed interest, both consumers and companies are realising the benefits of a circular economy.
Industrial designers must consider the locally available systems and service economies while designing for that region.
In her current role at Good Business Lab, Sushmita focuses more on social sustainability than environmental sustainability.
She designs interventions for blue collar workers in the space of physical & mental health and safety.
The interventions are created with a human-centric approach, delivered as a service, not as acts of charity.
She incentivises businesses to invest in such interventions and helps them recognise the business returns from them.
As a non-profit labour innovation lab, Good Business Lab measures the effectiveness of such interventions using quantitative research techniques like randomised control trials.
Having government-mandated Environment, Social and corporate Governance (ESG) norms pushed corporates to invest in sustainability initiatives whose results are not seen in the short-term.
Greenwashing is easy. But real change requires time, strategy, innovation and prioritisation.
Madhavi wants to know the hurdles preventing the adoption of sustainable alternatives. Sushmita quips that she has opened a can of tofu and shrimp!
Though sustainable alternatives are more expensive right now, when sustainable businesses are supported and encouraged to scale, in the future, they should become more affordable.
Millennials & Gen-Z are currently open to paying the premium for sustainability
Blue collar workers, who are busy earning their living, will opt for the cheapest alternative.
Sustainable businesses can be encouraged with monetary investments and hyperlocal consumption.
Flatheads, a sustainable brand of shoes, received a lot of support from the public after the founder appeared on Shark Tank.
Shark Tank is showcasing many sustainable businesses from across India and it’s heartening to see them get funded.
Sushmita calls millennials the “ready-made generation”, the first generation to have free access to and consume mass-produced goods.
Madhavi observes that there are fewer people around to repair things today.
The Japanese art of kintsugi values restoring things. But restoring things today is tedious.
Sushmita shares that this is due to planned obsolescence, a strategy adopted by many businesses.
Apple continues to accept old laptops, while pushing you to upgrade by purchasing a new laptop.
Sushmita’s entrepreneurship journey with Vrtta includes creating an Icelandic strategy game called Hnefatafl using reconstituted tetrapacks for Kavade Toy Hive. It was an effort to combine the ancient with the modern.
Madhavi loves the new-found focus on Indian games. She appreciates the revival of ancient Indian games and the creation of new ones, like Hampi, with artfully created pieces and minimal packaging.
Sushmita prefers a minimalistic style which is almost a blank canvas and adds a pop of colour using rich fabrics. She chooses long-lasting furniture which will keep her carbon footprint low in future as well.
Sushmita was concerned that Ikea’s entry into India would kill the local furniture market. But she’s observed a trend where people get ideas from Ikea’s curation, but purchase locally.
How does one start a career in design? What skills must they acquire?
Sushmita shares her experience of up-skilling with Offsite, a program about Industrial Design.
In the Bali Fab Fest, Sushmita and her inter-disciplinary group designed a solution to tackle the water crisis that Bali faces as a tourist island.
Sonam Wangchuk recently went on a Climate Fast to draw attention to the water shortage in Ladakh, due to climate change.
To promote Water Equity, Sushmita’s Fab Fest team open-sourced their design with clear instructions to replicate it locally. They have received some funding too.
Sushmita advises new designers to figure out what they love and pursue it relentlessly.
She is working on social and sustainable design projects with her international peers from the Offsite course.
Her pet project involves creating a circular economy for coffee.
Since Sushmita has interviewed designers as the co-host of the Design Lota podcast, she had hoped there would be no bad karma in this one.

Sushmita is a designer with a multi-disciplinary approach to her work. Her work lies at the intersection of creative problem solving, technology and envisioning a sustainable (present and) future. Sushmita is currently a Senior Design Associate at Good Business Lab. She is also a co-founder & designer at Vrtta, a collaborative focused on sustainability and craft.

This podcast is brought to you by Adeptic Creative Labs with support from the team at Clearly Blue Digital.

Write to us at podcasts@adepticlabs.com.

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This is a conversation between Padmaja and Chitra from Adeptic Creative Labs about Padmaja’s unique experience working with a whole of different kinds of stakeholders in the healthcare industry and her experiences working on a UX project amidst doctors and designers.

Project started in 2019, collaboration consortium, cardiology space
In procedure product
She took on a UX program manager role, along with 2 designers and other important members in the team. A 3 year project.
Had a huge learning curve in doing Ethnography studies, user research, talking to doctors, super specialization within cardiac science and combination of physics.
Going to hospitals in the US and in INdia, observing doctors, observing animal trials
Interviewed doctors and technicians, doing a follow-me-home study
Being deferential is key to stay in the conversation, MD's and PhD's, world's best - asking them to teach the team.
Challenge was working at their level, learning cardiology 1-0-1, and attending midnight classes with a lot of reading up. A very kind and accommodating environment.
Be open about not understanding, people have to be given the time, immersion of sorts, a guru-shishya parampara.
Team setup - Engineering team - relying on UI specs, stories, strong backend engineers paved the way for success.
Recruited people from across the world - Armenia, Peru, France, Russia and had to work in a stealth mode
Anonymising user specs, cardio to geo spatial
Team collaboration - in-person travel, until Covid hit, and then remote working, daily scrum calls, intensive spec writing, mocks and prototypes
Clinicians responded better to hifi prototypes, mock walkthroughs with engineering teams
Actually became much closer as a team, staring at each other over a zoom call in all meetings
High fidelity prototypes v/s wireframes - a flip
Challenges with legends, Mimicking whats there in the real world, showing new experiences, no interference in garden variety features needed to stay the same
Having doctors in the core team, who made time, the clinical rep who spoke for the team, fully engaged
Lessons for UX folks from this experience

This podcast is brought to you by Adeptic Creative Labs with support from the team at Clearly Blue Digital.

Write to us at podcasts@adepticlabs.com.

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In this episode of Aedge, Deepa Srinivasan, the Design Director at Kickdrum, converses with Sakshi Sipani, a young designer at Clearly Blue, and Madhavi Nadig, the CTO of Adeptic Creative Labs. It is an open conversation where they explore how design is integral to building good products, the interactions between designers and various stakeholders, and how engineering teams and designers collaborate to deliver great products and user experiences. Deepa also shares many tips for young designers.

User research is very important to build good user experiences
Deepa advises Sakshi to share unfinished designs with stakeholders, as early as possible, to get better feedback
Studies show that people hesitate to ask for major changes when they think the design is “finished”
Ideally, designers should be involved at every stage of the product development life cycle
By considering engineers’ inputs early in the design process, designers can ensure that their design has a feasible implementation
It’s best if designers work closely with engineering teams and build products iteratively
Deepa’s mentor pushes her to understand other people’s mindsets
As a designer, it’s very important to try and get into somebody else’s shoes to get their perspective
The way a design appears to a 25-year-old may not be the same to someone older or with poorer eyesight
One example of gaining a new design perspective is to switch to using only keyboard shortcuts for a few days
Designing with keyboard shortcuts in mind could help voice enabled interfaces as well
Deepa suggests discussing designs with different people, even if they don’t fit the user personas
Though designers typically frown upon “Hallway Testing”, Deepa finds it useful
At IBM, during a hackathon style event, Deepa teamed up with folks from the IoT team and built a product to monitor daily water consumption
As the team unpacked the complicated problem, they realised how many stakeholders were involved, including secondary stakeholders like apartment associations
Deepa believes it’s important for designers to be able to listen to a different point of view
Biases are unavoidable, but try to check yourself every time you speak
Listen, understand and empathise with the points of view of the end-users, developers, stakeholders and the business
Empathy is very important for designers
With so many points of view to consider, designer needs to learn to navigate and negotiate their path
To stay updated on changes in the design world, develop the habit of reading every day
Podcasts help you learn from designers around the world, even if it’s not something you’re currently working on
In order to not get outdated, expose yourself to new ideas via reading, podcasts, meetups
Deepa periodically does courses with the Interaction Design Foundation to stay updated and attends their meetups
When ideas stop flowing, it’s good to take a break, do something you enjoy and let your subconscious come up with a new idea
When an idea strikes her in the middle of the night, Deepa wakes up and jots it down immediately
If you’re stuck with a problem, find out how others have solved it
To avoid getting biased majorly, make sure to look for different points of view.

Deepa has over 20 years of experience in the field of user experience design. As a designer, she helps companies find solutions to their problems and turn ideas into tangible products. In her previous avatars, Deepa worked in online advertising, designed the user experience for various products and even ran her own design studio for a few years. Now, she works as the Design Director at Kickdrum. Deepa also has several hobbies, painting being her favourite. She paints in watercolour and acrylic.

This podcast is brought to you by Adeptic Creative Labs with support from the team at Clearly Blue Digital.

Write to us at podcasts@adepticlabs.com.

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This Aedge episode is a conversation between Sneha Laxman, an instructional designer with a varied career background, Chitra and Madhavi from Adeptic Creative Labs.

Sneha’s introduction to instructional design. Being an ex-service person, retiring from the Indian Army as a captain. Transitioning from technical writing to Instructional designer.
Drawing parallels between being trained as an Army officer and what was required to be a technical writer. Assessing requirements and getting the task done is a common trait that is looked for in any field.
Sneha’s varied career, starting from a telemarketing professional, chemistry teacher and researcher at C.F.T.R.I, Indian Army, technical writer and now an Instructional designer.
Challenges Sneha faced in her various career shifts.
Pursuit of finding something exciting to do and learn
Learnings as a technical writer. Importance of Needs analysis
Balance between enjoyable learning and driving actual impact on the ground.
Most impact can be achieved by catering to what drives the learner
Corporate learning and its challenges
Social learning or learning with peers in different settings.
Sneha’s advice to aspiring Instructional designers.

This podcast is brought to you by Adeptic Creative Labs with support from the team at Clearly Blue Digital.

Write to us at podcasts@adepticlabs.com.

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The Aedge podcast explores branding in this episode through a conversation between Linda Jacob, who conducts branding exercises for Clearly Blue Digital, and Chitra Gurjar from Adeptic creative labs. The essence of this chat includes -

Linda’s serendipitous introduction into the world of branding.
Branding is about understanding the client, their vision, who they are and who they want to represent.
When you meet a person for the first time, there is an introductory talk that follows. Branding is like an extension of that conversation for organisations.
Taking the essence of an organisation and talking about that organisation to others is one simplistic way of looking at branding.
Customers buy into a brand or trust the brand based on the character the brand identifies with.
People like to hear the story behind a brand. Humanising a brand brings more connection with customers.
What does it take to be a brand expert and conduct branding exercises?
Who in an organisation should attend branding exercises?
What are brand archetypes?
What is the importance of helping organisations understand their brand archetype?
Give the brand all the human elements to evoke an emotion in customers.
Brand Archetypes can evolve through the company’s journey.
How difficult is it for companies to rebrand themselves?
Linda’s thoughts on how people of different thoughts converge and come together to an understanding during a branding session.
Including everybody’s participation in a remote branding session.
The crux of a branding exercise is to understand the user persona. The brand archetype should resonate with the user persona.

This podcast is brought to you by Adeptic Creative Labs with support from the team at Clearly Blue Digital.

Write to us at podcasts@adepticlabs.com.

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This is a conversation between the Co founder and CEO of EdSanta education, Rohan Krishna and Chitra Gurjar from Adeptic Creative Labs.

Ed Santa is an Ed tech company which is 5.5 years old.
Rohan has experience in marketing branding and building products in a US based company
He has also dabbled in the retail sector in Europe, building products
Completed masters from University of Aberdeen MBA
Worked in Finding new products that can be introduced into the market and finding customers.
Finding for someone v/s building a product.
Joining an EdTech firm, learning all about a product and performing multiple roles
What to do with an idea? Getting the ABC's right. Start with market sizing, segment and need, understanding user personas
Discovering user personas for the learning space - has been made complex; understanding stakeholders
Reaching the end user in an enterprise requires crossing many hurdles
Dealing with different mindsets in enterprises, well structured systems
Learning ecosystem is made complex; don't ask when you last took a course, learning always happens in-line with work
Does learning always have to be structured? Online courses are not always the solution
The myriad forms of learning - one size does not fit all; experiences with various enterprises
Personalised, contextual byte-sized learning - to suit needs of the learner
The organisation's expectations from necessary structured learning v/s an individual discovering what's necessary
Enterprises looking to enhance learner engagement, going out to find courses that work
Going hand in hand with the kind of work being done with individual growth plans; battling the content fatigue
Importance of organic learning acknowledged by the enterprise
Researching adult learning - points of view from an Indian education scenario;

Advice for people considering a career in EdTech

There's enough room for everyone; know your competition
Understanding paying capacities; challenges for B2B and B2C, outreach for each and in-line with your funds
Understanding organisation processes and functions
Finding the right problem to solve

Rohan’s Brief:

Rohan Krishna is a serial entrepreneur. He joined hands with EdSanta's founding team with zest and vision to change how the world learns. In just a few years, he was able to crystalise his dream into reality with EdTech brands under the EdSanta umbrella – Elite Learning, Get me a Course, Get Me Guru, Get Me Employed, and AdSmart. In Rohan's words, EdSanta's vision is to "make learning accessible, effective, engaging, and personalised for everyone." His authored book, "Knowing What's Ignored: A Little Extra For Extraordinary Outcomes At Work," is an excellent read for aspirants pursuing their master's degree in business administration! A true-blue explorer, Rohan absorbs and enjoys new cultures and food while traveling globally. An innovator at heart, Rohan has a patented remote-controlled robotics product to his credit.

This podcast is brought to you byAdeptic Creative Labs with support from the team atClearly Blue Digital.

Write to us at podcasts@adepticlabs.com.

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It’s the end of the year and the holiday cheer is in the air. 2023 is just around the corner. It’s a time for many to pause, reflect and acknowledge what was and how it came to be.

We are thrilled that our Aedge podcast is now almost 6 months old. Thank you, dear listeners, for supporting and cheering us on throughout this journey.

In this year-end episode, we want to share our experiences from 2022 with you. Chitra Gurjar, Jyothi Sridhar andMadhavi Nadig reflect on their learning from hosting the Aedge podcast.

As a first-time host, Madhavi learns how involved the process of producing episodes is. She is pleasantly surprised by how much she learned by interviewing guests
Even though she’s a seasoned podcast host, Chitra often finds herself in awe as “magic happens!” Interviews frequently change course, seldom following any script
Jyothi is thrilled to be a first-time podcast host too. She enjoys delving into the world of cognitive biases and understanding the psychology driving the design of products and user experiences
The Aedge team committed to the challenge of publishing 52 episodes in 52 weeks
In the "Rarely Rational" series, each episode explores a different cognitive bias and its effects in many fields
Producing episodes for the Rarely Rational series gave Madhavi a chance to reflect on her experiences from different perspectives. She began appreciating the beauty of good design in everyday life
People tend to associate cognitive biases with psychologists, neurologists and neuro-scientists, not designers. Chitra believes our explorations of these biases, served with a dollop of humour, helped people assimilate them better. Madhavi reminds her that this is the "Humour Effect" at play
Chitra finds podcasting is a good medium to have focused, deep conversations exploring certain topics
Guests often ask "Will I be a good podcast guest?" and start off by speaking tentatively. A few minutes into the chat, they open up and the conversation "flows"
Jyothi admits that she too was sceptical in her first few episodes. But now she has discovered her potential and how much she brings to the table
Initially, Chitra was not too happy about listening to her own recorded voice
Listening to her own recorded voice while editing episodes, Madhavi has improved her speech and style of communication
Jyothi and Chitra's speech has changed too. They are more present and aware of their personal styles while speaking
Chitra prefers 1-1 conversations vs chatting with a group
Madhavi loves that podcasts allow listeners to feel like they're sitting at the same table and in conversation with the hosts
With 25 episodes out there, Chitra is convinced that our goal of 52 episodes is achievable
Madhavi points out that the team has come under the spell of the "Anchoring Bias".

Thank you, dear listeners! We look forward to your continued support in 2023 also. We hope to bring you much more in the coming days. Wish you all a very Happy New Year!

This podcast is brought to you by Adeptic Creative Labs with support from the team at Clearly Blue Digital.

Write to us at podcasts@adepticlabs.com.

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This is the fourth episode of the Rarely Rational series about cognitive bias affecting memory and recall. Jyothi Sridhar andMadhavi Nadig delve into all situations in their experience where context effect has come into play.

Listen to Taylor Swift’s Blank Space and figure out what she says. Misheard lyrics - an example where your brain fills in information when you miss listening to something.
A misunderstood or misinterpreted word or phrase resulting from a mishearing of the lyrics of a song is termed as Mondegreen.
Context effect is where a person’s decision making is influenced by the context in which information is presented.
When we encounter new information, our brains automatically try to interpret it in the context of our previous experiences and knowledge. This helps us to understand and make sense of the information more quickly and easily.
There are everyday examples for how we make decisions based on the context of the environment.
Priming occurs when an individual's exposure to a certain stimulus influences his response to a subsequent stimulus.
What are the positives and negatives of context effect?
Remembering a context makes it easier to encode information and improve recall.
Context effect can lead to errors in judgement.
How brands place their messaging and whom they use as ambassadors to promote their products has an influence on user behaviour.
Balancing out the positives and negatives goes a long way in keeping us from falling for the context effect.
Context effect plays a very significant role in AI/ML. Machines are learning to make decisions based on available data.
ChatGPT - Recent hit among AI machines that are able to have contextually aware conversations
Usage of conversations in our learning products by imparting concepts through a story. And the characters in the stories set the context to make the learning more memorable.
We live in the Age of Context. And with this new generation of personalised technology , there are five forces that are contributing to the rise of context - mobile, social media, data, sensors and location.
Perception of the value of artwork changes depending on where it is displayed. Art presented in museums were rated higher than when presented in a laboratory context.
Marketers use something called the ‘Attractiveness Effect’ - Arrangement of products to make them seem attractive and ‘Similarity Effect’ - Arrangement of products in a group.
Context effect can be used in UX design to create more intuitive user experiences.
There are seven flavours of context - device, activity, environment, time, location, individual and social.
Swiggy’s prompts to order similar food based on your past orders is an example of ‘adaptive experiences’ employed by brands
An interesting social experiment about organ donation showed how ‘communicating in a way that simplifies the choice makes a big difference’.
How context effect can come into play during user research interviews. And how to be aware of them.
Research has shown that people rank television commercials as either good or bad in relation to their enjoyment levels of the show during which the commercials are presented
A note about context awareness in ubiquitous computing by Mark Weiser.

This podcast is brought to you by Adeptic Creative Labs with support from the team at Clearly Blue Digital.

Write to us at podcasts@adepticlabs.com.

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In this third episode of the Rarely Rational series about cognitive biases affecting memory and recall, Jyothi Sridhar, Madhavi Nadig, and Anagha explore the Spacing Effect.

Madhavi tests listeners’ recognition and recalls using some tunes
The memory test includes segments from the Airtel ringtone, Ed Sheeran’s track “Shape of You”, ad jingles from Titan watches and Intel Pentium processor, music from the movie “Kantara” and the Jingle Bells tune
Popular tunes become unforgettable earworms since we hear them many times and on different occasions
The Spacing Effect makes us remember things we’ve heard repeatedly and at spaced-out intervals
It improves retention and recall by helping us move information from short-term memory to long-term memory
A short study or practice session, followed by testing your knowledge, evaluating results, and adapting your next practice session yield better results than one long continuous period of study
Jyothi learnt French better using Duolingo than in college, since Duolingo uses the Spacing Effect, along with several ways to motivate learners to continue learning
Anagha believes notifications are good memory aids that spur action.
Madhavi sets multiple notifications per calendar event to remember due dates and plan around distractions and procrastination
Anagha had to practice her dance steps, but her dance partner learned them just by watching the music video repeatedly
“Work with our brains, not against them”
Cramfests are popular though ineffective
With a bit of discipline, learners can take advantage of the Spacing Effect and learn effectively by spending the same amount of time
MOOCs try to use the Spacing Effect, but learners’ lack of motivation or discipline results in very low completion rates
The German psychologist, Hermann Ebbinghaus, has created the Forgetting Curve based on his research about how people forget
Retention requires reinforcing newly learnt information before it is forgotten
Over several days, SmartStart reinforces concepts using nudges, exercises, polls, quizzes, student-led discussions, AMAs, and Q&A with expert coaches
The rising popularity of microlearning in corporate learning since learners can complete small lessons whenever they find time and revisit them as often as needed
We use a generous dose of humour and memes in our learning products to take advantage of the Humour Effect while spacing information out
In marketing, the Spacing Effect is at the core of brand-building campaigns
How companies design the 8 or so customer touch points needed for a sale, using multiple channels
Online platforms allow advertisers to retarget consumers a fixed number of times in a day and over multiple days based on heuristics
Most applications use design elements familiar to users to cater to their expectations which have been formed by using similar apps for a long time
For complex products, user onboarding can be made easier by introducing new features in bite-sized chunks over several days
Websites typically repeat their call-to-action (CTA) buttons even on the same page
Repeating the call to action is a good strategy for creating impactful presentations and courses
Distributed Practice is better than a marathon learning session
Instructional Designers deliver more impactful courses by splitting learning into short sessions focused on a small number of related topics, with repetition and reinforcement of the key ideas built into it
The awareness of the Spacing Effect may help us not fall for click-bait
Companies can schedule periodic reviews to reinforce OKRs and company values in employees’ minds
EdTech companies can support students by giving them flashcards
Since recalling information also reinforces it, online courses should include periodic tests in the learning phase as well
EdTech companies and marketeers benefit from using a variety of messages and mediums to communicate ideas to their target audiences
Serial Positioning Effect: People’s tendency to remember items at the beginning and the end of lists
Even though it’s one of the most recognized brands in the world, Coca-Cola continues to spend $4 billion on advertising around the world.

This podcast is brought to you by Adeptic Creative Labs with support from the team at Clearly Blue Digital.

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This is a second episode in the series of cognitive biases affecting memory and recall. Jyothi Sridhar , Madhavi Nadig and Anagha talk about the Google effect and wonder what life would be like without the internet and digital devices to help us remember and recall information.

Who is up for a digital detox? Looking forward to spending a day without phones and internet? Make sure you are well prepared with handy information that usually is offloaded onto a digital device.
Google effect is the tendency to forget information that is readily available to look up.
Are you dependent on auto-correct for spellings?
Speed reading relies on google effect. Skimming through words on a page is common because you know you can go back to it whenever you want to look up for more information.
People tend to remember where to find relevant information or how to look it up, but not the actual data.
On the positive side of this bias, digital devices have enabled us to dedicate more time to creative work by offloading mundane information that need not be memorised by us anymore.
While there are positives to relying on the Internet as our second brain, not remembering important information in a dire situation might backfire.
Shortening attention spans and chasing down rabbit holes of information during a google search, forgetting the task that you set out for initially is a negative side of this bias.
Due to limited time you view only the top search results. And those may be based on those who had the deepest pockets to boost their page or those with the best SEO tactics.
Filter bubbles - a tactic used in displaying search results to a user based on their ideologies, creating echo chambers.
Recognition over recall is one of usability heuristics recommended in interaction design.
Search Engines- Confidence Boosters or Distractors?
Auto suggestions on IDEs are a positive of google effect.
There are different memory techniques to improve recall of information to reduce dependency on devices or the internet and overcome this bias.
Google now is an official verb in the Oxford English dictionary.
An ‘antegooglewhackblatt’ is a search query for a single word that returns zero results.
Have you ever heard of what a googlewhack is?

This podcast is brought to you by Adeptic Creative Labs with support from the team at Clearly Blue Digital.

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This is the third mini-series of the Rarely Rational series on cognitive biases. In this mini-series, we focus on biases that affect our memory and recall.

In this episode, Jyothi Sridhar and Madhavi Nadig talk about the Humour Effect, how it affects our perception and how companies and products leverage it to stand out from the crowd.

“Hey Google! Tell me a joke.” Even AI Assistants must get humour
Guess who had the last laugh when Google launched GMail on April Fools Day!?
Humour Effect is a cognitive bias that makes us remember funny things better. Hence it is useful in advertising and learning
Users like brands that are humorous. But leaders don’t consider humour essential for popularizing their brands
Amul has had its humour game on for decades, both in print and online channels
Humour Effect increases attention and improves retention
Humour can reinforce concepts to learners, thus helping them combat the Forgetting Curve
Products use humour to increase user engagement and stickiness
Aaron Walter’s translation of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to products: Products must be functional at least, reliable, usable and pleasurable at their best
People look for “delighters” in products
Type “askew” in your Google search bar and see what happens
For Deepavali, when users played an Indian song, Spotify replaced the progress bar with a burning sparkler
Evoke the humour effect by “surprising” users and making them smile
SmartStart is built on humour. Both the learner and the coach are characters in a comic strip. Learning unfurls through their interactions
Storytelling with a dash of humour has been the USP of all our learning products
Delivering a humourous video on Unconscious Bias to train 1 lakh employees of an Indian IT major, in 6 international languages
Madhavi creating memes for a SmartEES course on Mental Health to introduce lighter moments in the midst of teaching a dense topic
Humour can soften the impact of unexpected errors in services. E.g. showing fun messages instead of bland HTTP error codes
Lorem ipsum generators generate humourous content to entertain designers
Companies design good-looking mascots to personify their brands
Microsoft’s Clippy was both interesting and annoying at the same time
Humour is a double-edged sword—it can backfire
Monster India’s fun rebranding campaign of having their employees fake-quit drew the internet’s ire due to bad timing
Humour cannot salvage a bad product or bad user experience
Unintentional humour associated with a product may still work to its benefit
Programmers have ensured that Easter Eggs have always been around to entertain, delight and educate users
The earliest Easter Egg was when you used the command “make love” and it asked you “not war?”
Jyothi recommends Earnest Cline’s sci-fi novel “Ready Player One” since it’s full of Easter Eggs and pop culture references
Humour is a useful tool for persuading and educating people
According to the “Fun Theory”, fun, playfulness and humour can be used to change user behaviour
Manipal Hospitals replaced the red traffic lights with red hearts to educate Bangaloreans on cardiac health
How to use humour to “wow” your audience.

This podcast is brought to you by Adeptic Creative Labs with support from the team at Clearly Blue Digital.

Write to us at podcasts@adepticlabs.com.

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In this conversation, Shreya Choudhary, Senior Director Talent Development at Sprinklr shares with Chitra Gurjar her experiences and stories around learning covering

Her take on building talent in an organization, all of us have unlimited potential, we can build ourselves
Always wanted to do something with people, wanted to be a doctor being surrounded by doctors, drifted into learning development
Teaching hotel management students, the art of discovering who your are, understanding behavioural assessments and developing competency profile
Science of developing talent, creating experiences that engage people, knowing human behaviour, connecting with people
Challenges orgs are grappling with in the golden age of learning, pace at which skills are becoming redundant, what we need is not known (staying ahead of the game), shrinking time to design, staying relevant in the times of instant gratification, compress, condense in an attention challenged world
What can learning development folks do? reducing the knowing-doing gap, making sure people show up and learn with AI driven nudges
Increased possibilities in learning with AI via career pathing platforms, reduced time, increased scale of employee development
Platforms, for scale, coaching mentoring platforms at reduced cost, not LXP's and LMP's
Learning development evolving from ROI of learning to immediate impact, time to success, time to productivity
Have humans reduced their appetite to learn?
Learners today have reduced skills of abstracting, want everything “in My context” and apply learning ASAP
How do we assess the learning quotient of the team and learning inventory?
Learner expectations based on

Fast track career growth, immediate results

Priority for work life balance

Shift from learning experiences to people interactions through shared experiences, expert and peer interactions

Learning is a luxury so time to learn is shared with work
Economies of scale in learning
Adult learning - shift from older paradigms to learning in the flow of work
Timing, context and need as the way for learning professionals to add value and deliver in the organization
Message for aspirants for a career in learning - You teach best what you want to learn best and find your passion and keep it alive

Shreya Choudhary is a Talent & Leadership Development Leader, who believes people enablement can have a deep impact on organizational as well as individual performance and experimenting with the power of digital learning strategy to ensure learning goes beyond an event. She is in learning because she is a lifelong learner who is passionate about growing and helping people to grow professionally. Personally, She practices conscious living and trying to reduce my footprint on this beautiful planet we call home.

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As a B2B company, selling products and services to other companies, the strategies and tools you use for digital marketing are very different from those used by B2C companies. In this conversation, Padmaja Narsipur shares her tales from the trenches with Madhavi Nadig. Padmaja reveals the many aces up her sleeve, gathered while serving several B2B clients in the role of a Senior Marketing Strategist.

Topics discussed in this episode include

Clearly Blue’s journey from content creation to digital marketing
The right time for startups to get started with digital marketing
The different sets of tools in the arsenal of a B2B marketeer
How Clearly Blue starts helping a new client with their digital marketing
Time-frames B2B companies should plan for
What can companies gain from Adeptic's cohort-based courses on Marketing Leadership?
Skillsets needed to set up a marketing team
Problems that companies and startup founders were facing when they approached Clearly Blue
Budgeting for digital marketing
Is Digital Marketing an art or a science?

This podcast is brought to you by Adeptic Creative Labs with support from the team at Clearly Blue Digital.

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Why do we look to others for what we should think and do? This psychological concept is known as social proof. It occurs as a result of our natural desire to behave in the correct manner and fit in with others.

In this episode Chitra, Suchitra and Jyothi, talk about how they have succumbed to the Bandwagon effect and other experiences at work and life in general.

Jolo chip challenge and other social media challenges.
Social proof and the need to belong for humans.
Where did the term ‘Bandwagon effect’ come from?
‘Hopping on the bandwagon’ to feel included.
Positives and negatives of the Bandwagon effect.
How does the Bandwagon effect play out in UX?
Being aware of this cognitive bias and dealing with it in User research.
Groupthink as an outcome of the Bandwagon effect.
Examples of apps/products using Bandwagon effect to market their services.

This podcast is brought to you by Adeptic Creative Labs with support from the team at Clearly Blue Digital.

Write to us at podcasts@adepticlabs.com.

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Many important decisions concerning our health, wellness, finances and careers are affected by Hyperbolic Discounting.

Listen to Suchitra G and Jyothi Sridhar talk about this cognitive bias and why we value immediate rewards more than those that are long term.

The future of Buy now pay later in India
What is Hyperbolic Discounting?
Credit cards and loyalty points use this cognitive bias
Instant gratification and procrastination as a result of hyperbolic discounting.
Why does it happen?
How to avoid it?
Marshmallow experiment

This podcast is brought to you by Adeptic Creative Labs with support from the team at Clearly Blue Digital.

Write to us at podcasts@adepticlabs.com.

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“The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend,” said French philosopher Henri Bergson.

In this episode, Jyothi Sridhar and Suchitra G discuss how Confirmation Bias leads us to misjudgment. It is important for us to look for data that not only confirms our beliefs but also look for disconfirming evidence that does not support our view.

Cricket matches and superstitions
Are superstitions a result of confirmation bias?
Why do we cherry-pick information that supports our ideas?
Confirmation bias in UX
Filter Bubbles
Halo and Horn effects.

This podcast is brought to you by Adeptic Creative Labs with support from the team at Clearly Blue Digital.

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Social media is an integral part of our lives in this day and age. And new words have been added to the ‘Urban Dictionary’. One such acronym is FOMO. The fear of missing out.

In this episode, Jyothi Sridhar and Suchitra G talk about their experiences related to FOMO and how this is leveraged by UX professionals too.

What is FOMO?
Did it arise only after the pervasive nature of social media?
Are you ‘Keeping up with the Kardashians’!
How brands leverage FOMO?
How does fomo affect UX professionals and product managers?
FOMO at workplace
JOMO - Joy of missing out

This podcast is brought to you by Adeptic Creative Labs with support from the team at Clearly Blue Digital.

Write to us at podcasts@adepticlabs.com.

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Marketing is an exciting and challenging field. Marketeers are eternally trying to stay on top of changing consumer needs and expectations, laws, and technology trends.

In this episode, Sharvani Sachidanand swaps stories about marketing with Padmaja Narsipur. They discuss the evolution of marketing and share the unique demands of different industries with Madhavi Nadig. This is a discussion about all things marketing—traditional and offline methods, as well as digital marketing.

Topics discussed in this episode include

Sharvani’s journey into marketing, without a sales background
Padmaja’s segue from engineering to marketing
The perks and perils of targeting consumers online
WhatsApp is a pivotal tool for both trading and training
Technology enables effective marketing
Mistakes made and lessons learned from the trenches
The “Andhera in Andheri” story. Sharvani pulls off a great marketing event, during Mumbai’s peak monsoon season, despite the clouds of doom surrounding it the previous night.
Why the “from Silicon Valley” tag matters
Sharvani cleverly using Indians’ bias towards white skin to her advantage.

Sharvani is an entrepreneur, dog-mom, marketeer, storyteller & dreamer. She has straddled roles across industries, working with Robert Bosch (Blaupunkt), Pernod Ricard, Wipro Peripherals, Allergan Healthcare & Addto. In 2012, Sharvani co-founded annectoś Loyalty Solutions, which specialises in delivering and managing trade & channel loyalty programs. She has experience in Product Management, Marketing, and Revenue Management. Sharvani has a track record of conceptualising, implementing & managing innovative business solutions that drive profit & growth for her clients. She enjoys spending time with her 3 dogs, watching movies, making hand-made art, and cooking.

This podcast is brought to you by Adeptic Creative Labs with support from the team at Clearly Blue Digital.

Write to us at podcasts@adepticlabs.com.

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Conversations that help instructional designers and the modern learner, an exploration of microlearning between Linda Jacob, Chief Content officer at Clearly Blue Digital and Chitra from Adeptic Creative Labs. Their conversation summary includes

Microlearning being the way of learning these days
Constraints to learn in the workplace today
Memories from our learning days, school and college, chunking volumes of lessons into smaller bites and other techniques
The modern day learner, 4 minutes or less to view a video, is that only enough to hook learners, help them learn?
How to make learning matter to the learner, the "why" and adoption of concepts must matter or relate to what a learner is going through
Multiple mediums and formats of information packaged for effective learning
Microlearning used alongside intervention based learning
Spaced learning for improved retention and recall
What instructional designers can keep in mind
Summary of the microlearning exploration

This podcast is brought to you by Adeptic Creative Labs with support from the team at Clearly Blue Digital.

Write to us at podcasts@adepticlabs.com.

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Digital Marketing has become a buzzword today. Businesses of all sizes, in the B2B and B2C space, need a strong digital presence. You must be able to market to potential customers wherever they are online.

In this episode, Pavithra Rao from Clearly Blue converses with Madhavi Nadig about her experiences as a Digital Marketeer.

Pavithra’s tryst with Digital Marketing
What makes digital marketing appealing as a career?
Why companies need digital marketing
Myntra introduced online shopping for clothes and revolutionized the industry using digital marketing
Nykaa established its brand identity by targeting youngsters on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and TikTok.
Digital marketing is not synonymous with Social Media Marketing
Digital marketing is about reaching your target audience on any digital platform
Understand your target audience to make your digital marketing targeted and effective
Strategy to market products meant for children, who are consumers, but not the decision-makers or buyers.
Thinking of digital marketing after putting up a website? You’re already late to the game!
Content strategy is key to boosting websites
Typical timelines for different types of campaigns to yield results
Identifying platforms relevant to your brand
Typical misconceptions and incorrect expectations that Pavithra educates new clients on
Skills needed within digital marketing teams
Is it art or science?
Building a reputation and gaining users’ trust takes time
Influencer marketing works for B2C, not so much for B2B
Consistency and patience are essential for customer acquisition
Using existing data to identify more potential customers
How to gain explosive growth for the business?
Effect of huge spends on paid digital advertising
Is success in digital marketing the same as making content viral?

This podcast is brought to you by Adeptic Creative Labs with support from the team at Clearly Blue Digital.

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In this episode, colleagues from Clearly Blue Tara Chacko (Key Accounts Manager) and Subramanyam Koduvayur (Senior UX Designer) share their stories in conversation with Chitra Gurjar on

How they started website development work, starting their careers in software development and testing telecom software
Wondering how to get started, navigating terminology, learning and implementation
Endless iterations, revealing possibilities in stages, design is subjective and often thought of as a black box
Managing the website design through processes and having a structured approach
How branding awareness can bring about better client engagement when designing websites

Bringing the client’s thoughts to light

Helping clients see what they want for their website

Stakeholders getting involved only at later stages of website design.
Using visualisation and bringing clients together with designers early on and using a branding awareness exercise along with discovery meetings
Using quick iterations and listening intently to gain traction with the client
Challenges while handling clients - keeping your (the designers) expectations to a minimum)
Tips to be a good website designer -> Be a problem solver, understand workflows, have an eye for aesthetics, have an eye for details, be hands-on (try out things for yourself),
Remember - your patience will be tested (much like navigating traffic in Bangalore)

This podcast is brought to you by Adeptic Creative Labs with support from the team at Clearly Blue Digital.

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In this conversation Joseph Chinnaya, Director for Learning Tools and Technology at NetApp, and Chitra Gurjar explore learning around -

Joseph’s origin story starts with giving tuition to children on various topics
His learning journey began with technical training for customer support and product training. Developing a love for teaching and learning about oneself in the process
Recognising that adults differ from children in learning, and adults' resistance to change
His experiences contrasting formal, structured learning v/s self-led, nudge-based, coaching-when-needed styles
Learning early on about having empathy before influencing learners
Understanding Instructional Design through learning, teaching, formal training, mentorship and practice
As workers and workplaces evolve, designing learning for them is becoming more complex
Managing information overload with timely coaching, intervention and mixed learning approaches
Joseph's role in providing Learning Infrastructure, the evolution of learning technologies
An end-to-end view of learning, from learning design to delivery, and technology platforms
Keeping pace with your target audience, catering to different learning formats
A Netflix-like experience on their learning experience platforms, alongside traditional catalogue selection
Integrating with commonly used tools, like Microsoft Teams
AI to deliver better learning experiences
Effective learning, especially post-pandemic, for working professionals
Why course completion rates do not necessarily correlate with the effectiveness of the course or the learning
Like some readers discard a book after reading interesting bits, some learners may quit a course after learning things they want
The importance of topics, organization and content to make learning easily consumable
Advice for aspiring learning designers and professionals

Joseph Chinnaya is currently the Director for Learning Tools & Technology at NetApp. He has played a variety of roles in his 25+ years-long career in the learning domain. Joseph has been a Trainer, Instructional Designer, Content Development Manager, Regional Training Manager (APAC), and Global Sales Enablement Manager. Joseph has pursued his passion for learning & teaching while working with companies like GE, Microsoft, and NetApp. He has been a member of global learning communities such as ATD, eLearning Guild, Josh Bersin Academy, LinkedIn Learning, Coursera, edX, TSIA, and CEdMA. Joseph is also a jazz guitarist, always looking to co-create musical memories with his friends and family. Contact Joseph on LinkedIn or via Joseph@Learnytt.com.

This podcast is brought to you by Adeptic Creative Labs with support from the team at Clearly Blue Digital.

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This is the fourth episode of the Rarely Rational series. Jyothi Sridhar and Chitra Gurjar explore the Status Quo Bias. Why do we tend to leave things the way they are?

What is the Status Quo Bias?
It is an emotional bias.
Do we love change or not?
We generally try to avoid choice paralysis.
What is loss aversion?
There are transactional costs in making a change
Fear of failure and regret avoidance.
Do we tend to inaction while faced with making a tough decision?
How does status quo bias play out in UX research?
The framing effect.
Pros and cons of the default effect.

This podcast is brought to you by Adeptic Creative Labs with support from the team at Clearly Blue Digital.

Write to us at podcasts@adepticlabs.com.

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In this third episode of the Rarely Rational series on Cognitive Biases, Madhavi Nadig and Chitra Gurjar explore Authority Bias. Is it good or bad? Should we fight it or embrace it? Listen to both sides of the argument.

What is Authority Bias?
How we experienced it in childhood
Authority bias in the workplace
Triggers for this bias
Ideas for leaders to overcome authority bias and help their teams make better decisions
Why do folks give in to this bias?
Ways to use authority bias to our advantage
Google Maps and certain Tweets create some unexpected & undesirable situations.

This podcast is brought to you by Adeptic Creative Labs with support from the team at Clearly Blue Digital.

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The second episode of the series Rarely Rational is about the Illusion of Truth. Chitra Gurjar and Jyothi Sridhar discuss the Illusory truth effect and how it plays out in UX design.

Information Abundance makes us ‘cognitively lazy’.
Are we Cognitive Misers?
How do advertisements make use of repetition frequency?
Misinformation or fake news as a side effect of Illusory Truth Effect.
How Illusion of Truth can be avoided in User Research?
Processing Fluency - the ease with which information is processed.

This podcast is brought to you by Adeptic Creative Labs with support from the team at Clearly Blue Digital.

Write to us at podcasts@adepticlabs.com.

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This episode is the first in a series of conversations about the impact of cognitive biases in the field of UX research and design. In this episode, Aedge podcast co-hosts, Suchitra G and Jyothi Sridhar talk about

their journey into UX and
their understanding of the concept of Anchoring Bias
What drew them to the field of User Experience
What does ‘UX’ mean to them?
Cognitive biases and how are they relevant in UX?
People’s decision making process
52 UX Cards - the article that helped us discover and understand cognitive biases
Anchoring Bias definition and examples in real life
Planning fallacy.

This podcast is brought to you by Adeptic Creative Labs with support from the team at Clearly Blue Digital.

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In this episode, Linda Jacob, Madhavi Nadig and Chitra Gurjar talk about storytelling and creating impactful learning using stories. Amongst other things, they share:

Parents, grandparents and teachers shaping their childhood experiences with stories from mythology, the Ramayana & the Mahabharata
Weaving stories into learning experiences to make learning stick with learners, including adults
Blending fictional stories with everyday experiences to create impactful learning
Applying the art of storytelling in learning design
The 3-D analogy—making people live and breathe the story
Stories may help you feel you are a part of something bigger than yourself
Meme-fying a “heavy topic” to make learning light, yet sticky
Using relatable stories while designing a learning product for class 10 students
Can you teach storytelling?
The 100 stories project to teach English to visually-impaired students.

This podcast is brought to you by Adeptic Creative Labs with support from the team at Clearly Blue Digital.

Write to us at podcasts@adepticlabs.com.

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In this conversation, Chitra Gurjar, Chief Product Officer at Adeptic Creative Labs, is talking to Ashwini Radhakrishna, Lead learning designer and Suchitra G, learning manager, at Clearly Blue Digital on -

How Suchi and Ashwini stumbled into learning design
What is learning design ?
How does one get started in Learning Design
What goes into an LDD - a learning design document
Challenges faced while creating an LDD, keeping the focus on the learner, even though most clients arent the learner themselves
Experiences while building a course, managing expectations, keeping communication focus to ensure shared understanding and reduce friction
Managing expectations and partners in a learning design exercise, insights from managing learning design projects
Many people don't know what they want, the iterative process of Learning design, and continuously improving
Just go for it - if you want to be a learning designer

This podcast is brought to you by Adeptic Creative Labs with support from the team at Clearly Blue Digital.

Write to us at podcasts@adepticlabs.com.

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Reinforcement learning, micro-learning, comic strips, storytelling, coaching and social learning. Ever heard of all these concepts mentioned together?

You will now, as you listen in on this fun conversation with Chitra Gurjar, Linda Jacob, Jyothi Sridhar and Madhavi Nadig about how they created a product and program called SmartStart.

Listen in and learn how the team weaved soft skills coaching into stories revolving around the lives of Meera and Jasmin, two fun characters whom they conjured up. Yes, their names are a nod to actress Meera Jasmine! Also hear the perspective of a learner who first went on a learning journey along with Meera and Jasmin, and then met their creators at the end of it.

How did a coach, a master storyteller, a product manager and their CEO conceptualize a low-touch, reinforcement-based micro-learning program that uses comic-strip style storytelling?
Did the creators have a clear idea about what they were creating?
How did they know what learners needed?
What was the structure of the program?
How did Meera and Jasmin come into being?
What technology was needed to enable this kind of low-touch, reinforcement learning?
How did they facilitate social learning?
What kind of expert interventions were needed?
How do you measure the impact of such an esoteric program?
What did a learner experience while participating in this program?
What do learners who completed the program have to say about it?

Read more real-life success stories from learners of the SmartStart program here.

This podcast is brought to you by Adeptic Creative Labs with support from the team at Clearly Blue Digital. Read more about SmartStart here.

Write to us at podcasts@adepticlabs.com.

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In this conversation, Linda Jacob, Chief Content Officer from Clearly Blue Digital is in conversation with Padmaja Narsipur and Chitra Gurjar, co-founders of Adeptic Creative Labs. They share their views and experiences on -

Motivation to learn
Why learning is different for adults
Being social animals, social engagement matters for learning amongst humans
Learning alone v/s learning in a cohort
Interactivity and conversations for effective learning
HOTS - the DNA of learning - Higher Order Thinking skills
Why should people sit in a row, in classrooms and learn, even today?
Multi-modal learning
Working and learning are social today, not isolated
Shifting mindsets to learn
Trying out everything to learn, with curiosity and humbleness
Why learning fails and how to make it work
Learning for and at work, how to apply learning back at work
Looking at learning as experiments and adventure
Why Adeptic is different, creating safe spaces to learn for working professionals

This podcast is brought to you by Adeptic Creative Labs with support from the team at Clearly Blue Digital.

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This episode is the introduction to the Aedge podcast. This podcast brings stories and experiences around learning, design and marketing.

Chitra Gurjar, the co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Adeptic shares -

Origin story behind Adeptic Creative Labs
A history of how Clearly Blue Digital began
Her experience with designing a content marketing strategy and lessons learned along the way.

This podcast is brought to you by Adeptic Creative Labs with support from the team at Clearly Blue Digital.

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Aedge: Recent Episodes

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