Interviewer - Can you provide me with a description of your business?
Tushar Deshmukh - UXExpert - We offer UX (User Research, User Experience, Usability and User Psychology) related services. So far we offer our services in many domains. Some of domains like - Health Sector, Agriculture, eLearning, Hospitality, Restaurants, Logistics, Bio-Science, E-commerce and Artificial Intelligence. We do User Research and follow all UX Process and build prototype then followed by UI and Development for Web and Mobile Applications. Our client base are from India and across globe like USA, Canada, UK, Maldives, Australia, Germany and Israel.
User research is major domain we offer our core services
Recently we entered in a Product development, recently launched a product dedicated to Hotel Owners - OMH - Organize My Hotel. This is full featured ERP system for Hotel Management.
We are also in Corporate and Professional training we do provide training in Human Computer Interactions and UX.
Interviewer - How did you get started in this business?
Tushar Deshmukh - Before Starting this Business I worked in Mumbai and Pune. I started my Career as a Computer Faculty and then as a Designer and then I moved up with my skills and my last profile was Design Head, CTO. During this I observed many people specially so called decision makers ignore design process and many times they do not give that importance to Design , UX Processes. When you did not follow correct Design / UX Process then results are going to be failures. Every time hurry over designs no user research, no domain understandings just pushing over designs. I tried to resolved these issues with implementing correct UX process but no response. So after that I decided to leave such unprofessional environment and started own setup. UXExpert - we give all User Research, UX, HCI, Usability and User psychology related services for Web and Mobile technologies. For one year I worked as a consultant for UX to good companies in Pune. After Year my wife, Mugdha Deshmukh joined UXExpert. She comes with almost 8 years of Development Experience for web technologies. After that UXExpert becomes Truly unique service providing company where our customers get UX/Design and Development solutions under one roof.
Interviewer- Why do your customers select you over your competitors?
Tushar Deshmukh - Ideally we did not have any competitions at all as our approach towards work is totally different, honesty, ethics and we always consider “User First”.
As I mentioned earlier Our client base are from India and across globe like USA, Canada, UK, Maldives, Australia, Germany and Israel. We may don't have huge number of clients but we have “Repetitive Customers” who like our services and they like our work ethics and work process so they come back to us and also they give recommendations and send new customers towards us. As we follow User research and HCI/UX process in every project every customer consider us their part of team and we also work same way. Many time we go out of the way without out thinking on commercials and give best result oriented solutions to them so their users / customers satisfy using respective product. We want our every solutions must be user accepted, user friendly so our client gets more revenue. And I believe these are the reasons that our clients stick to us and select over our competitors.
Interviewer- What are the biggest issues for running this business?
Tushar Deshmukh - “Awareness about UX” and “I know - attitude ”
While working in UX field I always suffer or I find more irritating issue is “I know”.
In HCI we always says “You are not Users” and “I know the computer that means I know what user need”. Ignoring your users is biggest mistake we do in a IT services. I have seen many people in past who has same attitude / ego - “I have done so many projects in past so I know everything no need to ask client or user, Whatever I say is correct. ”
This is a totally wrong approach. Another issue I see is about Awareness about UX. Not only clients even people from IT industry are totally confused over this. Many people still think UX is part of Design or UX is UI or design. UX is not UI - UX is a Strategy to understand your users and it helps in to execute project
Interviewer- What suggestions would you like to give to the young budding entrepreneurs?
Tushar Deshmukh - Entrepreneurship is an exciting journey.It is filled with highs and lows that can put even the world's best roller coaster to shame. You need to be prepared to fail fast, learn from your mistakes, and move forward against all odds.
Few pointers for budding entrepreneurs : -
Challenge yourself, Do work you care about,Take the risk,Believe in yourself,Have a vision,Innovate, Find good people,Take care of your people,Know your goals, Learn from mistakes,Know your customer,Learn from complaints,Understand your industry, Take growth step by step, Always make sure it’s a win-win
Making the leap from employee to entrepreneur is an incredible opportunity and the ride of a lifetime. If you decide to make the transition, stay confident in yourself and learn from others.