Blog from the heart of IDCian

Live from Space

2011-05-19T02:35:00.000-07:00

I was watching some show on Youtube today and found this tiny little header at the top of youtube page which read that I can talk with the astronauts in the space LIVE.

Endeavour is the space shuttle mission being carried out right now for installation on International Space station. Find out more at Endeavour news

This is a great moment for common man to get to know what is it like to talk to astronauts in space live.

Post your questions at http://www.youtube.com/pbsnewshour?feature=ticker

Design : Practice not just theory

2010-11-13T22:54:00.000-08:00

Well Design not necessarily means order.

Randomness is an equal contender of being a good Design.

Important aspect of good design is a pattern. A pattern that we have seen somewhere and if we see it again we are sure to relate and recognize and most probably remember.

Take for example the simple dressing that I did for my food. I cut these fruits and put it on plate in some pattern (circular here). And later if you happen to see a webpage or a print on sari which has similar sort of structure/layout your brain will immediately bring forth this pattern and you'll make a relation.

As a Designer you have to keep practicing these traits and everyday routine and that's how it'll get imbibed in your brain, your subconscious mind at least.

Prototyping Interaction with Video Scenarios

2010-11-09T20:09:00.001-08:00

Prototyping Interaction with Video Scenarios

View more presentations from David Sherwin.

Persuasion - one of the qualities of a designer

2010-10-11T22:52:00.000-07:00

As a designer, our role is to convey the message using the most suitable medium. Medium may not be perfect, but it at least eases the task of end user to perceive the message. And as a designer though our prime focus is on end user, skipping needs and greeds of stakeholders may bring havoc. So how do you handle those situations wherein what you anticipated, rather inferred from research and user studies doesn't sound good to stakeholders. They don't see the value and you are sure that it is the correct way.

You have to persuade them. Either being nice and polite or strict showing consequences. And what type of consequences? You might think of terminating the project and vowing not to work with such clients anymore. But take a pause and think where the problem is. Most of the time its communication gap. They assume that you'll assume the same thing they assumed ! Stumped.

But literally they always think that the product is going to take the form they have assumed cause, they have been talking to you. As a designer you should have the skills and capability of taking out the unsaid from the mind of your stakeholders/users. They can't perceive or see what you can and its true vice versa too.

So based on my experience, I would say be persuasive in nature. Provide enough evidence. Statistics might not make sense but a story would. And this soft skill will not only help your professional life, but a personal one too.

Human pattern

2010-10-07T02:51:00.000-07:00

Image from : http://www.echostudiochicago.com/sustainability/window-on-the-world

Remember as a child we always wanted to take up that window seat be it travelling in bus, train, car or even at home. We used to love to sit at window. But we never noticed this behavior pattern. Today while going through a presentation on Search and Discovery pattern I came across following,

Window Place: Everybody loves window seats, bay windows, and big windows with low sills and comfortable chairs drawn upto them. - Christopher Alexander in Pattern Language

So here is my take on the design aspect of this pattern.

Psychologically human feel comfortable in peeking outside their small world. They don't want to get confined in that small space. However they don't want to plunge too in that big world. Small world is cozy and comfortable for them. A window provides them a way to be in their comforts and still take a look at the big world around.

You Interface should be something similar to this. User don't want to get into the large world. They need comfort and coziness. However they want to browse through the information. As a designer we should be presenting the complex information to user the way they see world from their window.

Design Experience or Design FOR Experience - 1

2010-10-05T21:03:00.000-07:00

User Experience Design. This 3 word title looks sounds great. Ask any designer and they'll say this is what they want to do or be.

It all started with Industrial design in the beginning. Then it was Human Factors Design (HFI) where users' interaction with the machine - the actual physical machine with all those levers, pulleys, switches and meters were studied. Then with introduction of digital media and technology it bifurcated into Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and Interaction Design. Designers now specialized in how user interacts with virtual objects constrained in one small screen. All those files, folders, Desktop and blah blah came into existence. With the advancement of technology this tiny little space got more power and technologists started putting more and more stuff in it. It became really hard for an end user to perceive what is inside and to conceive their task effectively. It wasn't race against time, it was more about not confusing the user. For the user of the system its like a maze wherein they have to anticipate what can come next. This cannot be left on mere guess work. Oh I started preaching design.

Coming back to actuals. Now the media and technology and so Information consumption is not just limited to one device/media/platform. You get same information in different format on different devices. Television, Computer - PC/laptop, Mobile phone and now Fridge, Washing machine, audio deck in car. And if all start delivering different interfaces to the user, there'll be no reason for him/her to continue using a service.

There comes the experience. As a designer we are responsible for designing experience of end user. But wait. We don't design experience because it largely depends on context, user and the goal and it is very dynamic. However we can design small artefacts to enhance the experience of user.

So it is designing for experience.

This post was more about arriving at the distinction. Next post will talk more about how do we Design for experience of users.

Shifted

2010-07-22T09:02:00.000-07:00

So I have moved to Bangalore.
And that starts a new phase in my life.
Hope it has lot more to offer than my imagination.

We should play games

2010-04-26T22:00:00.000-07:00

I am a huge fan of computer based games. Not that I don't play outdoors, but with time I have embraced computer games as my favorite pass time. Playing with my kid is lot more fun and enriching, but computer games give me direction in which our future interaction with computers is heading. More and more devices and software and in the core information are becoming tangible and graspable. Future lies in having a system where you can easily sense the appropriate information of the context you are in. And when I say computer based games, they are not just limited to screens. Nintendo Wii is an excellent example of out of screen games, which is marvelous combination of physical and virtual environment. So are Sony's gesture based game control and the latest in news is project Natal by Microsoft. Natal is an excellent example of how gaming is taken a step further to take advantage of computational power to utilize virtual information in a tangible manner.

Project Natal by Microsoft

Nintendo Wii game setup

Take for example Google maps open on a mobile device. If you open google maps on any mobile and tag your current location it'll automatically zoom to your current location and show information around you. May be based on your previous searches it shows sequential information. If you have been searching for restaurants in past on your laptop/pc and/or mobile on google maps, next time you do a search on your mobile it may/will automatically provide you with restaurants information around you. So you are in a game.

Project IGI game screenshots

A game is nothing but consumption of information in a context which is realistic. I have been playing project IGI. It's a third person, strategy based, shooter game. Information in there, is real like a physical world. You don't have dashboard or graphs or table to play with. you have actual physical objects. And once you are in game you will just play it rather than figuring out what's what? It's quite natural. Just see how lot of information weather, life of soldier, ammunition available, light conditions, time of day etc. can be easily figured out just by looking at the screen. It's real and natural.

If we take scenario of enterprise applications there has been lot of efforts in bringing the complexity of UI down to natural usage and very small amount of time investment to learn them. One way to achieve this is to create a game like scenario and then let the users (system admins, CEO etc.) play with the tangible information about outside world in the same fashion. Challenge is to figure out a way to represent the complex virtual information and relations between them in more natural way. Hence comes data visualization and mapping part of Design. It's altogether a separate topic in itself.

So in a nutshell if you want to learn UI design concepts you better be playing games !

Happy Gaming

PatternMaker with colors !

2010-03-20T03:45:00.000-07:00

Shown below are some of my quick creations in PatternMaker aka Rangoli app(screenshots)

Click on image below to open the app.

And now comes PatternMaker with Color options. Though the currently colors are not user configurable. Each time you click on the shape you get a random color. I have intentionally kept the tool/application simpler in operation to keep down the complexity of having too many options. Though I am working at making the color selection more simpler than just adding a colorPicker !

The undo has become a little buggy after color change is introduced. Will fix it soon.

One most important feature that the app is lagging is save option. Will be done in next release. Till then you have to resort to printscreen option.

Surprise in a Idea

2010-03-10T21:13:00.000-08:00

What does Sixth sense, Agatha Christie, Gumnaam, Byomkesh Bakshi have in common? Well ofcourse they are related by suspense and mystery. But how are they related to the title in the post?

Read on ...

In my earlier post about stickiness of an Idea, I talked about the book "Made to stick" and its contents in nutshell. Digging further deep in the topic and exploring the unexpectedness part of the message/idea, I have few take aways. These are not direct sentences from the book, the essence can however match.

Inculcating surprise factor in speech is necessary to retain attention of audience over a period of time. Whenever I come across such to-dos I try to find out logical process or method for it. And it has to be practical one so that it can be practiced right away. What can be a better way to learn these things then to practice it?

One method for creating surprise in a speech/idea that I have discovered (or rather a result of amalgamation of watching movies/reading novels) is to show micro/unit parts of the entire plot, one by one and showing the entire map at once to the audience. Let the audience make connection. By doing this we are providing context to the audience in parts and when we show the entire map at once we create gap in their knowledge. The effort of making connection between parts is left to them and that's what intrigues them in the story.

Now something directly from the book. "Break the mental model of your audience and give clues to fix it".

It's like a jigsaw puzzle, just that in the beginning you are not sure what you are going to end up with.

I have not invented this method. It's been employed by many successful directors and script writers of famous movies. Does the opening of this post now make sense? Well most of the suspense and mystery movies are framed like this only. And people remember these stories longer. It sticks to their mind !

Pattern with reset button

2010-03-03T23:36:00.000-08:00

Edit:

Check out the granular undo buttons. Now you can undo the the orientation/rotation of individual tile and undo actions in Pattern Unit work area.

Colors on the way !

We do make mistakes, hence we need a reset button. Undo is on the way.

Sorry under maintenance

2010-03-03T06:28:00.001-08:00

Under Maintenance!

I just chose to move few things here and there on my blog and see what it has done. Blogger has started giving pains to me. The only reason I have stuck to this is that it has flash support. I can embed my flash files in it. Otherwise I would have switched to Wordpress long ago.

Now I've to rework on this thing and get it done again !

You can still access my old post with this default theme.

Rangoli / Pattern builder

2010-03-03T03:32:00.000-08:00

I had a random thought on patterns when an idea of building an application struck me.

Rangoli is an inherent part of any Indian festival. Specially Diwali and Onam (I don't know when it is made in other regions of India). One of the peculiar feature of Rangoli (traditionally) is that it follows a proper geometric form. Entire area is divided in grid and the dots are joined in certain way to form a pattern. I have used the same idea with a little tweak. I have added to it the feature of tiling. Imagine a tile with some unit pattern drawn on it. If lot of such tiles are placed besides each other they give rise to a an overall beautiful pattern. Each tile may have a different orientation. You can play around with the unit of pattern and see the entire pattern form take shape.

You can try your hands on the application here >>

It's still under constant upgrade. Let me know your thoughts on this.

What have I learnt from my 1 yr old?

2010-02-23T07:19:00.000-08:00

Infancy is the most fascinating and wonderful time in the entire life. You know nothing and you are trying to grasp your environment.

The way kids interact with their surrounding objects and environment is the most natural way. Or should I say they expect the objects to behave in certain way when they interact with them. Well this is true for all of us of any age. But by now we have gathered lot of information about world that half of our problem is solved.

However this not at all means they we design products keeping the mindset and knowledge base of a kid in mind. Don't we design keeping the age group in mind?

The question is if we design products for certain age-groups the product usage for that age group is over after some time. If the product doesn't evolve with time, with the persona (representative of target audience), the product is going to fade and user is going to switch to next generation, probably a different product.

The way human brain evolves with time, the product should also age and gather knowledge to supplement the needs over a period of time.

Well, I digressed from the topic a bit ! My 1.5 year old looks at every object around her with curiosity and expects it to behave in some way. I found some objects to be intuitive enough to her, or may be she has learnt this from observing. Bangles, she takes and directly put them in her hand. But the next moment she puts them in her ankle. Well though bangles are not supposed to be worn in ankles (anklets are supposed to be worn) the very form of bangles suggest her to put it in some holding form. This is apt nature of a tangible static product. A well designed product will suggest its user of how to use it.

However, Digital products and interfaces pose a challenge, in a way that they have lot of hidden forms. They reveal lot of pages/forms as we use them. But what if they take the form of the current requirement of the user?

The gist of the post is to design products that evolve like kids, few trial and error, learning, gathering knowledge base and adapting to the user and not vice versa.

Finger is not a mouse

2010-02-22T21:18:00.000-08:00

Well you must have have guessed almost correctly on what I meant by the title of the post. With an onset of touchscreen devices and cheaper technology support (Ipad) we are going to see a rush of applications for the NEW genre of interaction. However we can argue that the interaction model was already there in terms of touchpad in laptop and wacom tablets. Only difference is now we'll be interacting with the content directly !
But wait a second. We will discover some gaps in the granularity of interaction model of mouse/pointer and finger touch.
Starting with basic question, and coders will get it quickly. What are different events that we code for a mouse?
mousemove - trapping the movement of mouse without click
mouseover - when mouse moves over an area of target object
mouseout - when mouse leaves the area of a target object
mousemove - trapping the movement of mouse with click
mouseclick/mousepress - when a target object is clicked by mouse mouserelease - when a mouse is released after clicking a target object

The reason of coloring the events differently is to make the interaction models in touch application and mouse supported application apparent. You can't have the first 3 interaction models in a touch application. You need to have a visible pointer all the time in the application that control those events. In touch application the pointer is activated only when you touch the surface, but that becomes your click event.
Hence the fundamental interaction model is violated. For certain application and websites first three are the core of interaction design. And if they were to be ported on a touch supporting software, they need to be completely redesigned.
And now just think of Adobe Flash support on Ipad/Iphone/Itouch. If tomorrow Ipad/Iphone/Itouch has Flash support and users open the site that uses the first three interaction mentioned above, they are going to go mad on why the site/application is not working. Do we then invest of designing and building those sites/applications again? That will be and expensive affair in terms of cost and effort.
As an Interaction Designer and a Flash Developer this comes as frustration to me to design and develop the same content for different devices. Well there seems to be a unique solution to this though.

Discovering ......

Making an Idea STICK

2010-02-03T22:29:00.000-08:00

Well the title of the post is attributed to the book I am reading, "Made to Stick" by Chip and Dan Heath. The authors are brothers majored in Psychology, one is a researcher and other a practitioner, as told in book. The book is about getting your message across and making it stick - remembered by your customers and make an impression.
I am just through the first chapter of the book and I have started seeing difference in whatever I write and speak.
The authors start with a context of the book asking one simple question - Why do we remember some ideas/sentences and its details easily and have difficulty in getting across some wonderful ideas? And the book is all about rephrasing your ideas to make them stick.
First principle is SIMPLE. I mean your idea should be simple. Well I am talking about the language of the idea and not the idea itself. It should be simple enough to be understood by any layman and should not have any room for guessing. It should be useful in making any decision in future by anybody in your company. This is why companies have vision and mission statements. However most of the times they are loaded with lot of ambiguities and multiple focus.
And there are in total 6 to make your idea stick.
Simple
Unexpectedness
Concreteness
Credibility
Emotions
Stories
If before delivering any message we check it against these principles we are for sure to get it across to the audience and make it stick.

Mahawar game testing

2010-01-18T23:54:00.000-08:00

Cross-Geo team

2010-01-16T19:36:00.000-08:00

Gone are the days when team members used to be at one place and they worked together on one project. Well I should have written about this long back, may be before I started my graduation. Coz this scenario has been in existence since the IT boom. Many many products like video-conferencing, tele-conferences, online collaborative tools exists today to bridge the gap of communication between team members located at different geographical locations.
This model works best when you have a shareable component viz. code, word document or something more textual. However communication requiring rich media to be shared becomes difficult.
Say for example designers located in different geographical locations and working on the same project module. Each designer come up with their own set of designs, however and when it comes to inculcate them into one, it becomes difficult in composing one design. There are online softwares available like Google docs, Zoho, Uhuroo which enables multiple editors work on the same document, but they are limited by the textual changes. An editor which allows graphical changes on the same sketch/image by different editors is yet to come. Another thought that cam to my mind is whether designers need such an editor?

Blank Post

2010-01-11T00:40:00.000-08:00

Wireframes

2009-07-27T23:23:00.001-07:00

Wireframe - this term may not be new to Interaction designers, Usability practitioners and lately project managers. However very little known to root level engineers (mostly UI developers). Well I wasn't familiar to this myself when I was a developer. But we have been practicing this since the start of our projects. We scribble roughly on paper on how UI of a product is going to look like - mostly layout and navigation. However we don't pay attention to minute details of how user would want to look at the product and navigate through it. It was more from system and implementation point of view. Well many of these things got cleared during my study at IDC.

So I slightly went off the topic. The reason for this post is that I just want to highlight some of the key benefits of wireframes. I was reading an article by Michael on Adobe for using Fireworks to do wireframing and export the design into css and html (that's a great relief for developers).
Following is the link >>
Michael list downs some of the key benefits of Wireframing. An excerpt from his article.

Wireframes help you communicate the fact that your design is a work in progress—and therefore subject to change based on feedback
Wireframes help ensure that the functional design is evaluated separately from the visual design
Wireframes don't become dated like comps, so you can reuse those unchanged dialog box sketches in your version 2.0 functional specifications even though you have completely reskinned the application
You can create wireframes much faster than you can design high-quality graphics—and it doesn't require much artistic skill
Using wireframes instead of comps for initial design reviews helps you to avoid the inevitable "please make the logo bigger" request until the functionality has been decided

3D movies on youtube

2009-07-22T23:00:00.001-07:00

And the day has come when common man is not away from watching 3D movies right on his desktop/laptop or home TV. Well thanks to youtube which has started supporting 3d movies.
See some of them in action below.

This is truly an epic in video watching history on internet

And the day has come - Mahawar

2009-06-21T03:17:00.000-07:00

The day I have been eagerly waiting for has come.

Mahawar - our game is out in markte. It's being sold and marketed by Funskool India Ltd.

Check it out online at Funskool site.

Thought the graphics in the game are not upto the mark that we delivered and the game play also seem to have been tweaked a bit to suit the market and manufacturing, I am anxious to get myself a copy of it and play.

Flash + Wii

2009-06-19T23:47:00.000-07:00

The way Flash is advancing towards embracing different technologies and input mediums, it is apt for Adobe to make it as a platform. Adobe Flash (earlier Macromedia Flash) which was just an animation tool initially has come a long way till date. It not only provides you a platform to build dynamic website, but also a Rich Internet Application and the output devices can range from Personal computer to mobile to TV to palm top. And with the Open Screen Project by Adobe and other industry leaders of technology like Intel, Verizon, Samsung, Palm, Qualcomm. Well more details on this can be got from its site

This was just to give a brief peep into world of Flash.

What I want to post here is to document my first encounter with Wiimote and Flash. Yes there are plugins and api available today through which you can take gestural input from Wiimote to Flash.

You can easily get lot of information on it from internet but this post is a consolidation of all of them and gives a concise description.

To start with you have to download the server to communication wiimote events to flash. And yeah flash apis for capturing these events and programming required output.

Get the entire suite at WiiFlash site

The site has got entire documentation of how to go about connecting wiimote and then using it with Flash. However there are some loopholes.

Prerequirements

1. .NET 3.0 runtime

2. wiiFlash server

3. bluetooth enabled PC/laptop

4. Wiimote

Steps

1. You have to download .NET 3.0 runtime environment from Microsoft site as the latest WiiFlash server uses .NET3.0 components. On the site it mentions to download 2.0. However I dug out from internet that 3.0 is the latest requirement.

2. Now you should have a Wiimote and a bluetooth enabled PC or laptop. PC might not have inbuilt bluetooth adaptor so you have to buy a bluetooth dongle and configure the hardware. See the image below. e.g. Bluesoleil

3. Download WiiFlash server from the site. Once you download the zip, extract it and locate the server exe at WiiFlash 0.4.5\WiiFlash 0.4.5\Servers\WiiFlashServer 0.4.5.exe document. Make a shortcut of this file, as you are going to use it everytime you want to connect wiimote to flash.

We now have to connect our wiimote with our pc/laptop for bluetooth communication

4. Open bluetooth devices dialog or go to My bluetooth devices and select search bluetooth devices. As soon as it starts searching for bluetooth devices press button 1 and 2 on wiimote simultaneously (see wiimote image for reference of these buttons). Once the search is complete you should see an entry like Nintendo RVL-CNT-01. Select this device and proceed further.

5. The dialog asks for a passkey for the device to connect to computer. This is for security purpose. However our Wiimote doesn't require any passkey so just say "No Passkey/passcode" and proceed further.

6.With this you are done with making wiimote pc connection. Double click on the wiiflash server. It should look like this.

The wiiflash server shows how many wiimote are connected.

Tadaang !!!!!

It's done.

To check whether your wiimote is working or not open wiimote_demo.exe from WiiFlash 0.4.5\WiiFlash 0.4.5\Examples folder. Though different sites mention just opening .swf file will make the file working I found that making a projector of the file is better option.

You need to open the file in Flash IDE (CS3 and above) and just publish it as .swf and .exe (projector).

Click open the file and you should see different parameters changing by chagning wiimote gestures and clicking different buttons.

See the attached screenshot below.

I think this is enough to start with. You can check out other examples in the zip and and have fun.

Next post will be how to program wiimote events and make exciting stuff in few easy steps. You should have knowledge of Flash event handling. ;-)

Transmedia storytelling and India

2009-06-18T22:41:00.000-07:00

Though this term might have been there from some time, I recently discovered it.
Transmedia storytelling as wikipedia says is storytelling across multiple forms of media. This is very new take in industry where they try to split the entire User Experience across multiple media and services. Different sites have been citing different examples to simply understanding this term.
Wikipedia gives examples of Matrix and Batman begins movies where they have tried to put some of the storyline/part into comic books and games to know/understand the content better.

Indian version of this can be cited in movie Krish, where they manufactured toys and props of the movie and sold it. But if you notice we have been doing transmedia storytelling since ages and its not new to India or Indian business. Take for example Ramayan. It there on TV, in comics, on everybodys mind. Though it was limited due to limitations of digital and print media.
So what is the point that I am trying to make here?
It clear. There is lot of opportunities for India to take a deep dive into transmedia storytelling industry and generate revenue. This will not only create employment but also take care of thrusting the product across different stratas of society.

I was just thinking if this can be linked to ultimate User Experience, where its no more limited to the duration of using/consuming the product/service but through out the lifetime.
And if you have some brilliant idea just enter Transmedia storytelling competition

Google is making a Wave

2009-05-28T22:03:00.001-07:00

Google Wave
Google is making a Wave by designing/developing a collborative environment inside the browser. I think it's more like iGoogle but less like it. Well it seems to be an attempt of Google to bring all its product under one hood and give user the power to create and share and recreate media/communications through inter usages of their already exisiting product.
So what's so big deal about it?
Well it's live and real time. So you can see what your friend is typing a message for you.
You may look at the different screenshots of Wave at its official website >>.

Big Data - visualizations

2009-05-11T03:12:00.001-07:00

Stamen Design is one of the pioneers in conceptualizing and implementing data visualization projects.
Michael from Stamen Design, presents their projects on data visualizations.In the course explains key concepts of what goes behind making visuals of large amount of data so that it is not overwhelming to users.

Michal Migurski | UX Week 2008 | Adaptive Path from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

Smart and Clever

2009-05-06T23:07:00.000-07:00

Dan Saffer is one of the respected names in the world of Interaction Design. He has authored books (Designing for Interaction and Designing Gestural Interactions) that are used as textbooks by design community. In his recent online presentation he presents the idea of smart and clever taken from dictionary and how we can use it in designing. They present guidelines for the process of design and work as a checklist at each and every stage.

Designing Smart and Clever Applications

View more presentations from Dan Saffer.

Agile Design

2009-05-05T23:51:00.000-07:00

Lot of work load in last few months refrained me from blogging.
However the work I was doing was fascinating from learning point of view.
Design as such requires time to evolve. You need to go through iterations for the evolution of close to perfect design.
Agile is the a project management for Software development lifecycle wherein all the stakeholders of a project work hand in hand, updating each other everyday and hence leveraging the product development. This helps keep everybody involved and influenced on the same track.

So how does design get impacted by Agile methodology?

Well it doesn't get much impacted but influenced by engineering/developers who want to finish off their tasks as soon as possible. However this methodology does give designers a great opportunity to listen to what developers have to say about users and product usage scenarios and also listen to end customer goals. This allows designers to quickly make changes, rather than iterating on concepts in the cube without customers/users input. You might say that this takes away designers "big" time to bring innovation in the product. But then playing devils advocate I would say that it allows you to quickly test your concepts with the users rather than doing all at once then going to user just to find out that your design doesn't fit the context. This is especially true when you are designing for enterprise products and you have to cater to group of users of having similar professional persona.

So in nutshell Agile has its own advantages and disadvantages for a designer. But it closely gels with the Design process and hence fruitful for the team as a whole.

Interesting way of reading news

2009-02-04T22:36:00.000-08:00

Have you got bored reading news headlines on those news websites and newspaper.

MSNBC brings a whole new concept of reading news. By games and by visual separation.

This is very good example of visual design. Interaction design doesn't score much here as users get engrossed in the game and forget to read the news !!

Better you play it and read between the balls !!

Another step forward

2009-01-30T02:45:00.000-08:00

Just an edit to this post. I am facing problem uploading/embedding my flash file in wordpress blog. They have banned it for security reasons, unless I host it on my own. So I am figuring it out how to do it. Till then my entries will keep on coming on blogger account at MyDailyFlash.

Now my Flash work is at Wordpress

Taking a step further towards making my online presence and knowledge more wide, I have added a new blog for displaying my experiments with Flash one a day. And this time I have made it in wordpress. As it gives more flexibility in design and adding content. Though I had a tough time getting my conceptual model of wordpress right. Ya ya I am an old blogger user.
So here you go >>

Perlin

2009-01-29T03:55:00.000-08:00

Perlin noise is a boon for developers and designer as this is able to create natural patterns as in landscapes, water etc. Given parameters of different values it can generate wonderful patterns.

One of my projects needed a water ripple effect. So I researched a bit about this on internet and found very good examples done in Flash and Java. And Perlin was the common thing among them.

Flash 8 and above gives perlin noise as a function of BitmapData class, with which you can generate a texture or pattern in single line of code. And when it is animated it is amazing to look at what different things can be achieved. From wood texture to sea waves to clouds to cloth furling.

See example below.
This generates a cool satin/water like effect. And changing colors can give you more.
Try changing different parameters.

Localization

2009-01-26T03:02:00.000-08:00

I found this on Windows 7 beta download site

Microsoft is seriously considering India as one of the largest consumer market for their product. And it can be seen by what is called localization. They are offering windows 7 Operating System in Hindi language. So without thinking I have started its download and will experience it.

My entry in Kirupa FXpression 09

2009-01-21T03:06:00.000-08:00

After a long time Kirupa has hosted a competition of special effect with circles on his forum.
http://www.kirupa.com/forum/showthread.php?t=316544
All Flash enthusiast must be aware of this forum. If not just visit and start enjoying Flash.

My thinking machine is apart

2009-01-21T02:56:00.000-08:00

After I got .... with constant rattling noise of cooling fan of my laptop what first came to my mind was to tear it apart. Now you see the consequences. Taking it apart bit by bit, screw by screw was very amazing journey. I conclude one thing. HP Pavilion dv5000 series the worst assembled laptop I have found. I just wanted to take off my noisy fan and clean it. And see what I have to do. Well in the next post I'll take you through the journey from one to several pieces of my machine.

Why quit Google?

2009-01-18T22:41:00.000-08:00

Ever since I have graduated from my college, I always dreamt of getting into this internet giant. But here is what Techcrunch has come up with. Letters from ex-employees of Google mentioning why they left the company.
Well I do agree with them but most of it has just come out because of the inability to settle in the big organization and follow a hierarchy (I am amazed it's there in google too).

Disclaimer: By no means I intend the hurt the feelings of Google. The content presented here are for the sole purpose of making things transparent and amusing.

Illustration

2008-12-24T07:55:00.000-08:00

An illustration I did sometime back during IDC days. They were great. The illustration depicts the architectural invasion in city. Well I have tried to make it secular too.

Flash resources

2008-12-18T22:46:00.000-08:00

I am one of those Flash enthusiasts who can spend entire day searching and learning the latest and new things in Flash and other related technologies. Well I do like to solve the beginners problems too and taking tutorials for them to understand the nitty gritties of flash. But right now I am myself in the learning mode for understanding AS3.0. Though it's been over a year since official release of AS3.0, I haven't had better hands on them until now. I thought of collecting the scattered resources/help/API on web and put on one place for my reference. Though many many webers would be doing so, I think this will be my personal reference material. The links given below again host a series of links to go furthere. After all that's what web is about.

Illustrator 9

2008-12-15T21:14:00.000-08:00

Taking some time out of busy work, I managed to come up with this.
Tried out blend option to blend two different strokes. And then touched upon a bit with blur and linear blur in photoshop.

First step toward future interactions

2008-12-03T03:58:00.000-08:00

I have been waiting for this moment since very long. Designing and developing my own multitouch applications. But to do that I must learn about it. Numerous articles have been written about it and I'm not going to add much to it. However I want to jot down my experiments and learning for my own sake and for other beginners like me.
In the pursuit of doing so I have created another blog KTouch wherein I will be posting my experiments. This blog will work as my resource pool for future reference.

DOD - Duty of Designer

2008-11-27T20:10:00.000-08:00

A Designer is also a citizen. His duties as a citizen of country comes first and then his professional obligations. Recent terrorist incidents have left some questions on what human has achieved and what needs to be done. I was furious at how blatantly these people are causing harm to our peace and ruining the brotherhood in our country. Not only that it's going to impact our economy too as foreign investors will be reluctant to invest in a place where there is no/less security of their assets, be it people or money.

So today I have a big question to ask to myself and my fellow designers.

What role can "we" play in curbing terrorism?

Locus of Decision

2008-11-27T08:24:00.000-08:00

One of my professors always used to say this "why do you decide based on others? Why is your decision influenced? Why is your locus of decision always somebody else?"
I would always answer this in my heart, "we are learning, we are not experienced, we don't know what's outside. Those who are learned, experienced and seen outside world influence us."
But now I think I need to change my answer.
We'll keep on learning for the whole life. Does it mean our decisions get influenced by the learned. Then what do we have to offer? What will be our contribution? What about the thought process that goes into our mind?

And we are there ...

2008-11-25T22:43:00.000-08:00

So the wait for few of us has ended.
The efforts of a 15 days of slogging and playing for one common goal, Designing a game has shown colors.
I can't keep my mouth shut any more now but just boast of it...

For those who feel strange to this post some track back in time >>
Games are in market. Go grab it, before it's out of stock.
It's available online at Indiaplaza.

Here's the screenshot of page where they are available for sale online.

Alternatively you can visit any toy/game store nearby selling Funskool products and ask for these.
Currently following four games are in market
1. Triplets
2. Chakraview
3. Gotcha
4. Sixteen Fixteen

2 more are yet to come in short time.
Holding my breath till then.

All of these games are effort of Prof. Uday Athvankar who guided M.Design students of IDC, IIT Bombay and taught them how to play and set the rules for game design.
More on game design at >>

Design (for) User Experience

2008-11-14T00:05:00.000-08:00

Well what have been misinterpreted so far even in design community comes to my notice while watching a session by Daniel Makoski. Daniel is User Experience Designer at Microsoft and a part of MS surface team. He pointed out that Liz Sanders defied the term User Experience Design.

You cannot design an Experience. You can only design FOR Experience.

Well she also defined experience in very good way. Liz says
experience is a point where users memory and dreams coincide

Well good enough. So now onwards we won't say User Experience Design but Design for (better) User Experience.

Interaction Designer

2008-11-10T19:23:00.000-08:00

“In the same way that industrial designers have shaped our everyday life through objects that they design for our offices and for our homes, interaction design is shaping our life with interactive technologies – computers, telecommunications, mobile phones, and so on. If I were to sum up interaction design in a sentence, I would say that it’s about shaping our everyday life through digital artifacts – for work, for play, and for entertainment.”
- Gillian Crampton Smith

Diwali-Rangoli

2008-11-06T20:44:00.000-08:00

It's been tradition now at my home that me and my brother come up with new Rangoli designs every Diwali. Both of us get together discuss some sketches and see if they can be done using the available colors or not. And yes budget is also to be considered. Never has happened that our Rangoli costed us more than 50 bucks. No use of stencils. Sheer imagination and hard work.
So this time we though of some freehand. And what else can we think of other than Lord Ganesh himself. He fits in every shape and size, irrespective of his shape and size (no hard feeling here, this is with utmost respect to him). And yes wishing every visitor a new beginning for the new year can be best represented by him. Well when we think of new we think of light and if light be combined with Lord there won't be any darkness.
I don't have initial sketches. I'll just put the final output.

Happy Diwali

2008-10-24T03:57:00.000-07:00

Music phones

2008-10-24T00:23:00.000-07:00

So what different things have you though your music phone (mobile) can do or look like.
The following page shows some of the very creative ways of designing music phones.
Music Phones
I know this will be very short post but can't resist to bring it to your notice.

My blogs' DNA Blueprint

2008-10-23T23:38:00.000-07:00

Hey all blog and web freaks with a little bit of biological bend. Check this out. Well that's DNA blue print of my blog by WEB2DNA. My friend Atish brought it to light. You might also want to check out another application that shows your webpage as graph. The link is inline on web2dna webpage.
This is utterly new way of representing a page on web. And see how beautiful it brings out different information.

www.kumarahir.com

2008-10-22T22:01:00.000-07:00

That's the name of my new domain.
So this Diwali I resolved to get myself a playground aka domain and webspace to play around with different applications and experiments and host my portfolio.

Tips for Bloggers

2008-10-21T22:56:00.000-07:00

Those of you who want to add a little bit extra to your blog, be it hit counter or site map or statistics or a new show off image gallery there are many free 3rd party widgets available. But they come either with price or advertisements. But why pay them when Google allows you to do so in house. Hmmmmm.. so the question is where is it?

Well I was trying to search for the same answer and I landed up on TipsforNewBlogger blog which lists down different methods that are simple and inherent in Blogger that we can use to enhance the richness of our blog.

Happy blogging !

Booking a ticket

2008-10-19T22:11:00.000-07:00

You must have guessed it right by now what this post is going to be about. But before starting I will just let you know the moral of the story first, so that you might not want to go through entire post and then repenting having known all these things.

"Use of IRCTC website for booking tickets of Indian Railways is only meant for people who are well organized and well planned. Those who plan their visits well in advance are the winners in this game. Last minute bookings will not help you get the desired tickets. You have to hop from one page to another atleast for few hours to attain Nirvana of booked ticket"

So far I have booked almost 50 tickets on this site. Most of them done at the end. But recent experiences prove the above statements. And during this journey I have kind of discovered few tips and tricks you can use to beat the system. However the final result rests in the hands of IRCTC. When each and every second of your time is precious (for last minute ticket bookers) following tips may help you get desired results. Also find my comments on each point inline in italics.

Open 2 to 3 browser instances and try again and again to reach the login page in each one of them. Probability is very less, but you can try. The probability of getting the home screen in the very first try is inversely propotional to the festival/holiday/holiday in sequence
Once you have opened the browsers switch off image loading/animation/sound/image dither/font cleartype options in the browsers. All these things take up too much of network bandwidth creating bottle neck for the original content/page. I don't know why IRCTC site has so many animations and images on their home page. Yes advertisement is the business model but it's not primary function/source of income for them. They should consider the users pain. How many users who do online booking refer to these advertisments and follow them for further information?
Use Remember password feature of the browser and site, so that if you land on login page the login details are filled in and you don't have to waste your precious minutes. Just hit enter or click on login/submit button to login. Well well once you do this you have saved 15-30 seconds of your time filling in important two lines of credentials.
So after login the biggest mistake that IRCTC website people have done is to land you on "Plan travel" page where in you have to find trains first, then fill in your personal details and then go for payment page. 3 pages in whole which takes up almost 10 to 15 minutes depending on your network and typing speed. So you have to fill in details again like source and destination station, class, date of journey etc. In this case use autofill feature of the browser. It's there in IE as well as Firefox. But this one is limited as it does not autofill few options. So we resort to 3rd party softwares. FormAutoFill is one such good freeware application. You can make profiles for different forms. So before you start booking take some time out when there is no rush, afternoon or evening (IST) and make this forms. Then when it's time to fill the online ticket booking forms just select the appropriate form from this software and it will fill in all the details in just one click. So you again save almost 2-5 minutes of your time on single page. And hit submit to go to next page. So if you are planning your travel it'll save 10-15 minutes and for quick book option it'll save 5 minutes of your time. More you save time more is the probability of your getting to the page.
You must have extreme patience to get to the payment screen. Don't use autofill option for entering login credentials of netbanking unless the computer is used by you only. Never use it in cybercafe as it can be used to leak all your money from your account. Ok once you have made payment it's upto God only to lead you to congratulations screen of your booked ticket. There is still chance that your payment gateway or IRCTC server misbehaves and you are slapped with "Sorry- transaction failure" screen.

So these are few observations that I have done. Infact there are many but it'll take series of posts to discuss them. I have done an assignment on designing simple and usable screens for online ticket booking site during M.Des in usability classes.
Will scan the assignment notes and post it soon (i need to locate where those sheets are lying these days)

Well I forgot to add wonderful online resources that will ease half of the task of booking ticket i.e. checking availability of seats. Cleartrip, Zoomtra and Erail are the few websites that gives a new paradigm to checking availability. Zoomtra goes ahead a little bit and allows the user to search tickets based on price, departure time, arrival time and journey duration and that too in a noble way. Hmmmm, discussing these paradigms and their comparison will be taken up in another post.

Design resource

2008-10-14T22:29:00.000-07:00

This is a nice collection for getting enough to start the work and boost your brain

Interesting menus - Some Google work
http://www.google. co.uk/landing/ thingstodo/ #tip36

30 Beautiful Photoshop Illustration Tutorials
http://sixrevisions .com/graphics- design/30- beautiful- photoshop-
illustration- tutorials/

Phonographantasmasc ope - Must see!
http://in.youtube. com/watch? v=to99C-0cLGE

80 Graphic Design Links You Can't Live Without
http://outlawdesign blog.com/ 2008/80-graphic- design-links- you-cant-
live-without/

7 Ingredients Of Good Corporate Design
http://www.smashing magazine. com/2008/ 10/06/7-ingredie nts-of-good-
corporate-design/

Top Ten Things They Never Taught You at Design School
http://www.designob server.com/ archives/ entry.html? id=121

Graphic Exchange - portfolio
http://www.graphic-exchange.com/aabout.htm
got this from Dhairya

Google goggles

2008-10-14T01:13:00.000-07:00

Ever been in situation when you had just hit send button of your email and repented of not doing so?? Well many of us have been victim of such conditions when we do that's not intended or that's not the right thing to do at that time.

So gmail team has come up with a new feature in their labs edition. It's Gmail Goggles.

What goggle does is to divert your attention to some other thing when you are going to take a critical decision so that you get enough time gap to rethink on it. It does this trick by giving you simple math problems of addition, multiplication etc. when you hit send button. Once you solve the problems correctly your message is send. And yes you still have time to revert or discard your message. You can set time when you want this feature available. Say Friday nights after parties you are most likely to be in unstable state of mind. So you enable this feature to work for Friday nights. And then whichever mail you compose and send on Friday nights will encounter goggles filter.
To enable this option go to Settings and then Lab option tab.

Happy goggling.

Composition of Life

2008-10-07T09:05:00.000-07:00

Life is constituted of experiences.
They are of three types: physical, emotional and intellectual. The quality and
quantity of experiences determine the nature of life. If your experiences are
happy, your life is happy. If they are unhappy, it is unhappy. If dynamic, it is
dynamic. If dull, it is dull. Therefore, to bring about a chnage in your life
you need to change your experiences. An experience is a unit of life. It is made
up of you, the experiencing subject and the world, the experienced object. The
union of the subject and object, you and world brings about an experience. It is
like a chemical reaction between two chemicals. If you wish to enrich your life
you must deal with its constituents. Improve both, the world and you. Study the
naure of the world you contact. Develop it to the extent possible. Also study
the structure of your personality. Improve it as well. When the constituents are
bettered, the experiences arising out of their union must necessarily improve.
then the law applies - as the experieences so the life. Your life takes a turn
for the better.

And excerpt taken from "The Eternities - Vedanta Treatise" by A. Parthasarathy. I am reading this book these days. Very good for self realization.

Savouring Savior Sandwich

2008-10-05T05:13:00.000-07:00

Note: there seems to be some problem with the template that I am trying to build for my blog, so the blog entry is not coming properly. It may be truncated at end in different browsers. Will be corrected soon.
There is only one person in a big 2 BHK flat doing nothing but surfing internet watching youtube videos, indian idol 4 videos and reading novel "Life of Pi". It's 1:30 PM and he is still looking for options to have lunch at. He had tried and tested almost all the nearby restaurants and they all seem to be old and tasteless to him. He is hungry. Well he has no hard cash in his pocket too and there are no ATMs nearby. What can be done? Well he is a designer. And Designers don't despair of any limitation or constraint. So was I. And then started the quest to get something yummy in my tummy.

Quickly went to nearby Food Bazaar. The items on list were bread, cheeze spread, tomato sauce, aloo sev and whatever I think was important. I managed to get all the required things to make a goodie sandwich and have treat of the day, rather week.

So here lies all the raw materials to make a yummy vegetable sandwich.

We have cucumber, white bread, capsicum, aloo nimbu sev from famous Haldiram namkeen, Everest chat masala for that extra chatkaaraa, Maggi Pichkoo tomato sauce, Milkmaid cheeze spread with Mexican chilli ting and yes an empty stomach to grab all this in.

Well I made different types of and flavors of sandwiches but I'll show the one I liked most.

It all starts with a bare bread.
This was a freshly baked white bread and as soft as cotton. So won't be any problem nibbling. Add a layer of cheeze spread to two slices of the bread.

Here's the cheeze spread. After applying cheeze I added a bit of emotion to it to make it more soothing to my heart. I wrote my and my beloveds initials K and F. And it was looking an awesome topping. Thought of doing some typography with tomato sauce someday. May be next time.

And now is the time to add some crunch and munch to the food. So here comes special Haldiram sev with nimboo paani. (chatkaaraa lag gayaa naa??)

And then it was the time for cucumber to get laid. Ummhhh (do I hear any mumbles??) I meant to lay cucumber pieces as stuff.

And now the final layer of ccccrunchy capsicum cut in very ornamental shape. After adding some more crunch with a sprinkle of Haldiram sev, the sandwich was finally ready to be eaten.

And what will be best way to eat this. With none other than Indian Idol 4.

Trying out Gtalk Labs edition

2008-10-02T23:28:00.000-07:00

I got to know from my friend that Google is trying out hands on Gtalk in their labs. And it's available for download to test it out. So I just went ahead and downloaded this new kiddie with lot of enthusiasm, anxious to see what new has Google team done with Gtalk.

But after installing it and using I just can't bear it for more than few minutes. I uninstalled it. Listed below are some of the usability issues I found with it.

they have put all chat windows into one. there is no liberty of moving (drag-drop) of different chat windows of different users
sign out option is removed from chat window
you need to right click on icon in task bar and then sign out
limited settings options
the title text color is grey which doesn't go well with blue tint of chat box
when u are chatting with someone you can't say who's online
closing the any chat window will bring up the last left chat window on top rather than the adjacent one

Idea Generator

2008-09-30T06:47:00.000-07:00

We often fall short of ideas. Majorly when we are looking for them. Remember one of those brainstorming sessions. How many ideas did you generate 10? 9? 15? But what if you want more of them. And whacky ones. There are lot of methods and formal skills to generate ideas. But the tool I am going to show will just lay enough foundation for new ideas and get you going with the whackiest idea in the world to play with.

IdeaGenerator
The tool works by combining three random noun and/or verbs creating a name of something which is out of the box. You can scroll through one word with single click or have some random creation by clicking on shuffle button.
Try it. It's real fun

Image make over

2008-09-18T05:44:00.001-07:00

Have been thinking of giving a different look to my blog since long. So for next few days please bear the changes (eye popping) that my blog undergoes. And this is not going to be just ornamental changes. I'll keep visual design and color harmony strictly in my mind.

The contrast

2008-09-17T10:27:00.000-07:00

Miss South Carolina speech

An Indian boy selling peacock feather fans on road without any formal education

Look at the contrast.
Or should I say the capability.
Well there has been so much discussions on the speech of Miss South Carolina's speech, her hesitation and nervousness on stage, but atleast it should be grammatically correct. And look at that boy's confidence.
Disclaimer: In no way I intend to hurt the feelings of people of different countries. Just that I wanted to bring to notice the contrast that exists in developed and developing countries. They should however not be taken as representative of the whole country.
note : I found boy's video on Silent Ideas posted by Maulik

Cheap softwares

2008-09-16T07:19:00.000-07:00

Well don't raise your ears here.
By cheap I mean cheap on computer resources. Today softwares are studded with extra features and information other than it's main functionality.
Take for example mp3 player software. The main function is to play the music. But software make other information/features available and make them CPU and memory expensive, consuming more runtime resources like RAM and CPU.

Different type of views for the list of songs-artist, genre, album -why the hell do we need to see songs in different ways. we just want to listen. show them in the most easy way and that's it.
equalizer. that's fine for music composer. Apart from presets how many of the music listeners do actually use this feature.
themes- customization/ornamentalization of the player is ok to certain extent. but why would a listener bother to change each and every button of the player?
visualization. apart from parties while doing some other work will a listener bother to being a viewer too?? No need to have flowers running all over your computer screen and consume important resources while you have more important things to do.

So in a nutshell I was looking for some mp3 player which will just let me listen songs and be very delicate on my CPU and RAM.
And I found "sheep's billy".

Billy is a lightweighted no nonsense audio player that allows you to quickly play an entire directory of MP3 files. Though it doesn't support all the file formats, it is very quick and prompt.
Get Billy here >>

Also take a look at other application the guy who call himself "sheep" has developed. All feather light applications. Well this has motivated me to build something like this myself.
Adobe AIR. You can build widgets which are very lightweight.
Hope to post it soon.

my Say on Design

2008-08-18T01:37:00.000-07:00

After graduating from a Design school I think I can present some of my knowledge to my fellow friends. I have written a short essay on what Design is. You can see it here >>

off for time being

2008-06-24T22:16:00.000-07:00

Now that my Masters' at IDC is over and things are being packed to step in the real world of Design, I'll stay away from blogging for some time. Though the design learning and experiences will keep on coming regularly.
So for time being it's Namaskar from Kumar.

Master of Design - Jack of all trades

2008-06-15T11:53:00.000-07:00

The title. You thought what it could be?
The T-shirts of all the 44 students at IDC read this line proudly.
We have succesfully completed our Masters in Design. Though the degree has not been given, we put up a great show (exhibition) Degree 44 at Nehru center, Worli, Mumbai.
Here are some pics of the show.
Though the post 2 months old the memories are still fresh.

The multi touch feel

2008-06-07T04:37:00.000-07:00

Ok so being an interaction designer you got to do things which makes people say "AHA" or "WOW"
No no it's really not like that. But that's the byproduct of whatever work we do. People are going to exclaim these words implicitly

Stealing some time out from their busy schedule few of the hole-diggers (well this is what we have started calling ourselves at IDC, it's an alias for Interaction Design students @IDC) have planned to make this DDS a big event by putting up some of the works which are going to take the eyes of the audience out from their head. I'm sounding too violent !?!?!.

There was one time during Techfest when even people from Computer Science and Electronics dept. of IIT were found numb looking at the applications designed and developed by Hole diggers.
If you remember I posted about in "Illumiletter" the gesture based input system for drawing and playing with letters. You can see the video here >>

And this time during DDS (Degree 44) we are going to strike back again with some jaw dropping works and experiments. Multitouch applications are in our focus now. We have been working hard on this to get it to work. Thanks to NUIGroup which provided open source files on building these applications and the product.

designflavr

2008-06-01T04:13:00.000-07:00

As usual I was surfing Internet and came across this very nice site which a good resource of illustrations and compositions. designflavr hosts works by different artists just like deviantart does, but this one has got a taste of it's own. I liked the works of many artists and thus it gets place in my inspiration section.

Plagiarism-1

2008-05-31T02:03:00.000-07:00

In this post and the subsequent series of posts that are going to follow this, I will discuss what this word "Plagiarism" mean and what threat does it pose for the one who creates and the one who takes. As a designer and a honest person I thought it would be nice to take a note of this.

I confess that even I have done it many a times. But not after an instance when my professor pointed to graphical icons (they were small to represent sections) in my portfolio work and asked me whether I made it. Though my answer was no, he said that I had not done the right thing. I should have atleast acknowledged the creator. And that was an eye opener for me. Today it's me who's taking the portion of work of the original creator and publishing under my authorship, tommorow it can be some body else doing same with my (original) work.
I am not at sounding sarcastic or arrogant when I say "my" work nor am I being selfish.

Ok so here goes the first session with meanings of "plagiarism" from around the web.

Wikipedia says it thus
"
Plagiarism is the practice of claiming or implying original authorship of (or incorporating material from) someone else's written or creative work, in whole or in part, into one's own without adequate acknowledgement. Unlike cases of forgery, in which the authenticity of the writing, document, or some other kind of object itself is in question, plagiarism is concerned with the issue of false attribution.
"
And it goes on by classifying plagiarism as

Academia
Journalism
Online plagiarism
Other contexts
Self-plagiarism

Now there is something called self plagiarism too, in which you reuse your published creation again and again without attributing to the original work and calling each a new creation. Now that's not fair too even if it's your own work.

Dictionary.com says thus
"

the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work.
something used and represented in this manner

"

Now without being plagiarist myself I would thank Wikipedia and Dictionary.com for providing such a nice resource.

And you know what, am thinking of doing some creative assignment on the same topic.
Keep reading

Degree 44

2008-05-25T22:44:00.000-07:00

The official website of Degree 44 - Design Degree Show 2008 is launched at
Degree 44

Degree 44 on the rise

2008-05-21T03:57:00.000-07:00

Style strikes again

2008-05-16T22:19:00.000-07:00

Degree 44

2008-05-14T22:01:00.000-07:00

Design Degree Show (DDS)-the annual event, showcasing the design efforts at the Industrial Design Centre (IDC) at IIT Bombay.

Schedule
June 9th - 11th 2008 at IDC, IIT Bombay
DDS timings: for 9th, 10th, 11th June 2008: 11.00am to 7.00 pm

June 13th - 15th 2008 at Nehru Centre, Mumbai
Inauguration: 13th June 11.00am at Nehru Centre, Mumbai
DDS timings: for 13th, 14th, 15th June 2008: 11.00am to 7.00pm

DDS is aimed at creating design awareness in society and simultaneously offers a platform for people to meet and interact, as a facilitator for new ideas to emerge and fruitful collaborations to materialize.

See you there

Style strikes

2008-05-11T05:58:00.000-07:00

Prem Joshua

2008-05-05T12:07:00.000-07:00

You got to listen to the music this person creates.
Prem Joshua
It's incredible, it's soothing and it blows your mind completely with the silence and peace it provides. I have been listening to all his albums since last few months. Since the first day I listened to his music no day goes without listening to any of his tracks.
I have become a great fan of his composition.

Prem plays Indian fusion. Well I don't have any knowledge of music but I can still comment on what's good and what's bad. A pull of single chord and every beat of Prem's composition strikes. The neurons in my brain are stimulated the moment I listen. Especially "Bombay Railways" from his "Taranga" album is superb.

Visit his site at >>

Some of the compilations are available for free to listen at >>

Break free

2008-05-03T22:39:00.000-07:00

I have always loved to go out. Wander and roam here and there. Just feeling free, exploring the unexplored, enjoying unexpectedness and surprise. Unknown places lure me.

One of my wishes in life is to visit as many places in the world as possible.
First I shall start with my very own state Gujarat then country and if time permits World.
There is so much to see and relish in India that I think I'll hardly make to go out of it atleast in this life. May be God give me a second chance.

Sudden change in mood is the resultant of constant work pressure that has been bugging me since last few months.

Wanna break free from this schedule.

That's it.

It's show time in IDC

2008-04-30T06:26:00.001-07:00

This week is going to see some of the products of future and some mind blowing concepts taking shape in IDC in last semester.
We are having our final rounds of presentations of our projects.
All the best to you people.

Caution: Trojan attack

2008-04-18T22:15:00.000-07:00

Hello People. It seems that the blog has got enough attention in the eyes of hackers and spammers that this blog has been continuously attacked by trojan posts. So in case you find any comment made by strange entity please do not click on it to view their profile. It's a trojan. Example user names who were making comments are "akinol" "trojan spirit" etc.
I have been deleting such type of comments to stop it from spreading.
If anybody has clue of how to thwart it let me know.

After DNA it's Times of India

2008-04-10T21:26:00.000-07:00

So why other leading news papers stay behind covering what's going to shake the Indian gaming industry. This time Times of India gave an exclusive article what have been fun and learn for us.

Read this >> article on Game Design in Times of India.

The game is in news now

2008-04-06T22:23:00.000-07:00

What we did last semester as a 15 day module is in news now.
The games of the students of "Game Design" module conducted by Prof. Uday Athvankar have made it to market. The games have been patented (Design registered). Funskool one of the largest game and toy manufacturer have bought the games to be released by the end of this year.
DNA-the national news paper of India published in 4 major cities has noticed this venture and published an article on it. Online version ->>
Congratulations to all the gamers and game designers @ IDC

MahWar - the ultimate treasure battle designed by me and Suri is also a part of this.
More images of Mahawar here >>

Thursday films

2008-03-06T20:52:00.000-08:00

Well very rarely do I see two movies in a day. And it was today that this happened. After having a heavy lunch I felt asleep at my workstation itself. Waking up after a while I went to see what others are doing to raise the level of seriousness I had been loosing since last few days. Biju was watching Mr. Bean on Holiday. Though he was listening to it with headphones on I can still make out what's going in the movie. Mr. Bean movies rarely requires you to listen anything. It's always watching and having fun very little verbal comedy.

So in this movie Mr. Bean wins a trip to some famous place (I don't know which coz I wasn't listening). The movie is about his experiences on the trip. I note one thing. Mr. Bean is a very diligent man. Though he doesn't know the priority of his works he does it best whatever he thinks of doing. And this leads to all sorts of problem. But he never took any of them as problem. And that's why at the end he is happiest of all. Simple (huh !! I sometimes behave like that).
That was quite fun watching him do many innocent things.

Later in the evening was the turn for another movie. Well we decided to see "Bhool Bhuliya" a recent Bollywood flick. But then I thought to try some random stuff. So I double clicked "Antitrust". At first I thought I was a romantic drama but later it came out to be something related to all computer programmers and scientists around the world and Business.
This brought the hidden programmer within me on surface and I felt like doing something :D (Mr. Bean effect). Antitrust is a movie which every programmer would love to watch and enjoy and think upon. Tag line "We take nothing seriously unless it's on hard drive". The cast is perfect and sequence of the story is kinda bit fast. Some of the things seems to be exaggerated but it's ok when it's a movie.
Recommended watching : Mr. Bean and Antitrust

Illustration-Twirl tool

2008-02-28T07:19:00.001-08:00

Was playing with illustrator and I found a new tool in Illustrator CS3. It's called Twirl tool. It's twirl whatever vector object it acts upon. See below image for the location of it.

After playing with it for some time did this vector art.

Playing with Illustrator is real fun. The vector graphics are cool.

illustration

2008-02-25T22:59:00.001-08:00

An illustration I did sometimes back. Were that's not a sarcastic one as it's not having a head. I wanted to myself but I'm very weak in drawing faces so didn't put up anything there.

Maps

2008-02-23T00:50:00.000-08:00

Recently I started playing with map api available online. There are different service providers for this maps like Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, Nasa, and many more. So I just thought of some ideas that can be used with map. I have been messing around with them since last few days. Though haven't developed any cool stuff got to know the nitty gritty of their working. Now with this knowledge I think take it forward to build some cool applications on top of it.
Well this becomes my part time activity. I would like to do something good in it. I'm totally into it right now.

My portfolio

2008-02-16T21:49:00.000-08:00

It's been quite some time since I updated my portfolio with recent works and projects.
Do visit and comment. >>

Young creativity - media strikes

2008-02-16T08:45:00.000-08:00

Just few weeks before I got to visit my friends place. A maid servant comes to prepare food at his home. Her young kid scribbled on newspaper and left it. And I happened to notice it. Couldn't help taking photos of it and publish. Well they are exclusively copyrighted :-)
Take a look.

The thought process of that small kid aptly represents the outer world. It can be clearly seen that the small child perceives the world much clearly than we think.
The first image shows what he must have seen on TV, a cricket match and he mentions the names of the teams too. In the second image the scribbles of red color shows his technologically advanced thoughts when he draws a camera in the hand of a person standing in the balcony peeping into other persons room. Doesn't that recall of some breaking news on "Aaj Tak" or similar news channel. During my last project it came out very clearly that viewers of this group largely see such programmes which induces excitement in them. Though they are relatively of no good use they bring drama and after all they are real life which makes them even more exciting. These viewers see these type of (aaj tak, ndtv india etc.) TV news programmes exclusively made to create hype of certain thing and get engaged.
The result is before us. Though I haven't asked the child about the origin of these drawings, it is definite that they are the results of what he must have been watching on TV.

Goal - directed Design

2008-02-16T02:52:00.000-08:00

Some take away points from Alan Cooper presentation at UICONF

Good design is
Ethical
Purposeful
Pragmatic
Elegant

Goal directed Design
Goals drive a person's actions.
Tasks are things a person does in order to accomplish his goals.

Too many designers and usability professionals focus on simplifying tasks rather than accomplishing goals.

Common goals that can be assumed for a user
Don't look stupid
Get an adequate amount of work done
Don't make any big mistakes
Have fun

Goal-directed methodology
Research the domain
Model the users
Envision the solution
Refine the behavior
Support development

While interviewing look for goals as well as tasks
look around for
understanding of general work environment
clues to tasks they haven't mentioned
evidence of inadequate systems
hints at task frequency or priority

New template

2008-02-14T09:33:00.000-08:00

Always wanted to have my blog stretch along the width of the window to give more space to my posts, otherwise looking squeezed in little area. So this is it.

Void created in Design

2008-02-06T01:45:00.000-08:00

Void was created in Design world when Prof. R K Joshi an eminent typographer from India passed away on 4th Feb 2008. R K Joshi is a well known name in the field of Indian typography nationally as well as Internationally. He gave a new perspective to Indian typography and script by designing and developing a software called Vinyas to design Indian fonts. I am lucky to have heard him during ICOGRADA design week last year.

Illustration by Biju

Time to zero in

2008-02-05T02:03:00.001-08:00

I have been wandering through the jungles of ideas since last few months for my final degree project. And today it seems that I have kinda zeroed in on few. Coming few days are going to see tornado effects settling down. :-p

illumi-letter

2008-01-31T06:05:00.000-08:00

illumi-letter is an interactive installation set up in IDC during Techfest 2008 in IIT Bombay.
Design is an inevitable part of any innovation and technological development. It goes hand in hand with technology to give products that succeed and be a part of common man life. To bring this thing to notice, installations were set up in IDC as a part of Techfest. Techfest attracts engineers from around the country. It is important that they understand the importance of design in early stage before stepping in industry. As a student of Design we thought it is our responsibility to do so. Techfest also attracts common man because of it's competitions. Hence this is the right time to put up something designer that's understood by technologists as well as laymen.

illumi-letter is one such installation.
illumi-letter enables a participant to interact with the screen and draw. The input medium is a source of light. The participant waves the light source in dark, the gestures are captured and drawn on screen in form of letters of a message. See the image below.

The video can be seen here http://www.vimeo.com/652613
Drawing starts when the light is switched on and completes when it's switched off. Once the light is switched off, the last drawing starts animating itself. It repeats the gestures performed by the participant continuously.
A continuous background music is played in the installation. However when a participant interacts with the screen by waving the light source, beats of music are added to the current track to give an altogether different experience.

Designing and developing the installation was a great experience in itself. The project was developed in Flash and ActionScript 2.0.

illumi-letter

2008-01-27T01:21:00.000-08:00

Open invitation to all.

I know it's a bit late looking at the dates mentioned on poster but the installation is open on request at any time.

[poster made by : Suri]

An exciting entry is about to come

2008-01-23T00:57:00.000-08:00

Hey ya pepol. I have been in hibernation since quite a bit of time. Well I think it's just a week or so.
However it felt like months since I last blogged.
Was busy with an interactive installation to be put up in Techfest.
The experience of working on something that's going to be shown to the world is really amazing. You got to test and rectify all sorts of problem. Design and aesthetics has to be there along with robustness of the installation.

so just wait for few more days.
Techfest starts on 25th Jan 08.

Continuation to my previous post

2008-01-13T20:55:00.001-08:00

"Tata Nano"

So after a long wait Tatas have come up with a new car that an average Indian can afford. Or must I say going to bring revolution in automobile industry. But soon after it's release some people from all over the world have started criticizing the new innovation necessary for India.

This article says it a lot.Treehugger

Yes safety and environmental standards are put at stake in bringing down the cost. But this is how it'll start and keep on improving (Japanese Kaizen). We need to welcome such innovations.
Especially in India it's of very much importance.

Note : do read the comments at the end of the article Treehugger

Design inhibition

2008-01-13T20:49:00.000-08:00

A nice article on what inhibits innovation and design in industry

BusinessWeek article

Design Quotes

2008-01-13T20:40:00.001-08:00

Some of the quotes on design I found while surfing

“You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality.” – Walt Disney

“Let the viewer rule the idiot Box and not get ruled by it.” – Myself

"Television is the first truly democratic culture - the first culture available to everybody and entirely governed by what the people want. The most terrifying thing is what people do want." – Clive Barnes

“Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.” - Oliver Wendell Holmes

“A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a quip and worried to death by a frown on the right man's brow.” - Ovid quotes (Ancient Roman classical Poet and Author of Metamorphoses, 43 BC-17)

“Every time a man puts a new idea across he finds ten men who thought of it before he did - but they only thought of it”

Welcome 2008

2007-12-31T21:02:00.000-08:00

Days and months and Years have passed. We have been through the changing times since our presence on earth. One more year has passed. It had it's own essence of love and hatred.
Let's resolve to spread truth and peace around us.
Let there be light of knowledge and freedom to spread it.

Let's welcome the new year 2008

What do I do?

2007-12-20T21:53:00.000-08:00

What do designers do when they are not doing their normal course of work?
Or do they anytime leave their normal course of work. I think being a designer, you have to work 24x7. Being observant all the time and looking for new ways to conceive and execute. That's what a designers day in a life is.
So here's is what I do when I'm not doing what is to be done ;-).

Surf internet. I do it a lot. Open up my blog, click on the links in inspiration section and there starts my voyage of discovering new things, in life and in market. I visit smashingmagazine and freelanceswitch a lot. Smashingmagazine gives pool of resource while freelanceswitch tells me how to use those resources in a productive way to get you some bucks. Apart from these I usually go through the portfolio websites of designers and programmers available on famous portfolio sites like coroflot. You get to know what others are doing outside so that you don't stay a pond's frog at the end of the day. The kind of work that is being done across the world and that you are doing gives you a comparative sense of where you need to excel and where you are good enough to showcase yourself.

I design. I take up just anything and try to analyze and see how it can be improved. Hmmm so that's kinda thinking job. But all that takes place in brain. Very few are taken down on paper.

[to be contd.]

Interaction Design

2007-12-14T20:34:00.000-08:00

Interaction Design:This is what I am specializing in since more than a year. The course though is for a duration of 2 years I think it's not enough for anybody to get all the knowledge of interaction design in this small time span. Interaction Design brings the actual user into picture, his/her aspirations which are directly or indirectly connected with the product and his/her consequent reactions to the products. As an interaction designer you always have to keep few things in mind while designing any product

Give user the command
When a user is operating some product he/she doesn't want to feel fool. They want to master it in the minimum cycles possible. So if your product is fairly complex to understand the user will no longer remain attached to it (unless that his/her job). Giving user the required command to play around with the system and get surprises (not in terms of warning/alert boxes but as helps and wow things) will keep them engaged playing with it. And this will constructively develop the database in the mind of user.

Give the product a wow factor
Unless the product or system surprises user in some sense they are going to feel bored about it. According to Information theory proposed by Shanon, unpredictable things are interesting and vice-versa. Hence if on a website the layout changes everytime a user lands on the home page, the website becomes interesting. But then it has also to help user retain his/her prior knowledge about the system and use it. So the unpredictive part has to aid the prior knowledge to grow knowledge of user about the system.

"Design is not only how it looks, it's how it works"-Steve Jobs
Making your product visually appealing will get the half work done that is bring user to your product. But the main task of retaining him/her to user your product will be handled by how have to designed the system of your product. That is how the user is going to interact with the system and get desired output. Here the desired output should be approximately equivalent to actual output. And that's where the user experience design comes into picture. It's not just about how a user feels about the product at the surface level but how he/she will feel about it for subsequent usages. Will the experience dry up on later use or it'll grow or it'll stay as it was on first use are some of the things to be taken into mind.

Busy times

2007-12-10T21:46:00.000-08:00

Last few days, infact a month has been quite hectic and busy in my life. And that can be seen in my blog too. It's been quite long since I last posted.
I'm so tempted to post a blog and this one comes in the midst of the tight schedule.

The final picture

2007-11-17T20:21:00.000-08:00

What I have been working on so far in this semester is going to take the final shape this Tuesday, when I will present it for the final presentations. As if a photo is getting developed. You don't know how dark or light or saturated it will be. Manual photograph development has this problem wherein you need to treat the photopaper very cautiously keeping track of time and amount of chemicals to be used. The result of the print is know only in the end.

Music and study

2007-11-12T21:31:00.000-08:00

So what's the relation between these two things?
Well at IDC they are tightly coupled. None can live without other. They live in symbiosis. An IDCian cannot live without music and cannot do away with study. So both of them have to exist and go in sync with each other. But you'll say that this is the case with every other individual. But IDCians are a little different here. They just don't listen to the music. They visualize. And the results are seen in the assignments they do. At some point it might sound (Mozart/Beethoven) crazy and alluring and at other it's the soul stirring experiences.
The image says it all ;-)

It's Diwali

2007-11-06T09:23:00.001-08:00