After long time

I am visiting my own online diary after very very long time. And it had taken really long thoughts for me to come back and start writing.
I have been busy with work and life.
And that means learnt a lot. It was all going in head waiting to come out.
And when I start writing I am unable to decide what to write. There is so much of it that I have to sit back again and decide. And in times where microblogging has taken up importance than long paras it becomes rather more difficult. Before writing this I did see what others (those whom am following) have written. And to my astonishment even they (who are regular bloggers) haven't posted since almost a year. Well is this a change that we are seeing.

From a Designers perspective it is very important to understand the psychology shift of users and bloggers. They have moved to a medium which is more close in their vicinity. Users always resort to something that's immediately available to them and try to get their work done as much as possible from that closest object/medium. With the onset of smartphones and cheaper dataplans, users have started blogging or rather giving status updates from mobile itself. Unless long blogging/writing is earning you bread, its highly unlikely that you'll even open a blogger and post.
This also explains the success of twitter, pinterest, facebook. Successful will be the one which allows normal users to bring their small nuggets that they have posted at different places and show up as one big post.

These are times of electronic publishing.

Design : Practice not just theory

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.

Persuasion - one of the qualities of a designer

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

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.

Shifted

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.

My thinking machine is apart

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.

DOD - Duty of Designer

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

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?

Booking a ticket

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.

Composition of Life

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.

Plagiarism-1

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

Break free

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.

Thursday films

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

Young creativity - media strikes

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.

An exciting entry is about to come

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.

What do I do?

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.]

Busy times

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

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

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 ;-)

Dussehra and Navratri and Fafda-Jalebi

Today is Dussehra the 10th and final day of 9 days festival called "Navratri". This festival is celebrated by different names in different parts of India. In East it's called "Puja" wherein people celebrate and worship the powers of "Devi" or "Durga" the female goddess in Hindu religion.

In Gujarat and neighbouring states the festival spans for nine days ooooppss I should say nine nights wherein people come together and dance to the tunes of folk songs. Wearing traditional colorful dresses watching these people dance is fun and enjoyment. It gives immense pleasure to enter the arena and dance to the beats. Well you may miss in the first try but you won't resist doing it either.








And on the final day prayer and worship is offered to God asking for peace and brotherhood and prosperity. But what's so peculiar about this festival in Gujarat is the food. "Ravan dahan" may also be seen at many places.
The history behind the festival is that on this day (Dussehra) God Ram killed Ravana who had kidnapped Devi Sita, wife of Ram. This day is celebrated for the victory of Good over Evil.


"Fada and Jalebi" worth more than 3 crores are sold on a single day all over city. This name is not unfamiliar for an Indian. And for Amdavadis and Gujju people these delicacies are something to savor upon on this day.
So being a "pundit blogger" I typed "fafda jalebi" in google and came up with this blog have it's name as "Fafda Jalebi"

Well it's these festivals and culture that make India a great country and place to live at. You have each and every moment to enjoy and cherish.