Design Ecology

East is West and West is East

2009-01-03T03:48:00.000-08:00

(Source: http://xkcd.com/503/)

Yes, terminologies can be very confusing especially when the context is shifted. For Americans, what they call “Far East” is actually closer to “Middle East”.

Flash Idea

2008-12-26T21:20:00.000-08:00

Since these days I am working on putting together the second edition of IdeaCampPune, I am jammed with the word ‘idea’. Here is one idea that I would like to share with you.

I was wondering that as we can save the last impression of open tabs in Firefox browser, similarly can we retain the last impression for the desktop, such that when we restart the system next time we start from where we left in the previous session.

Photoshop - As real as it gets

2008-11-20T05:27:00.000-08:00

Recently, Ad agency Bates 141 designed a poster for their client showcasing a realistic version of Abobe Photoshop CS4 environment. This concept touches the designer in me. It feels nostalgic as I have used Photoshop since version 3.

The amazing part is that the execution keeps up with the cool concept. Get a glimpse of behind the scene act here.

Altered Sense of Time

2008-07-22T07:10:00.000-07:00

In my undergraduate course in Physics, I was exposed to “Twin Paradox” - a thought experiment in Special Relativity. According to the paradox, if one of the twin brothers travels at the speed of light to outer space and returns back on earth, he will be younger than the one left behind on earth. This paradox was based on the phenomenon of “Time Dilation” which describes that time slows down for observers in different frames of reference. To better explain the phenomenon, my teacher oversimplified the theory and put across an analogy of two people doing some work. Say, when my Mom is gardening time would fly swiftly for her since she enjoys the activity. On the contrary, if I have to deal with some banking work (which I hate), I will feel that it is taking too long to finish off the drab work.

That was what I learnt in Physics long back. I remembered this episode while I was reading about Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's theory of Flow.

Csikszentmihalyi describes “flow”, or optimal human experience, as a state of happiness while engrossed in an activity. He describes flow as
"being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one, like playing jazz. Your whole being is involved, and you're
using your skills to the utmost."

When in the state of flow, the mental energies are drawn towards doing the activity better, bringing a sense of fulfilment and meaning. This is a Zen like state where one truly experiences the joy of the activity one is involved in and stops getting distracted.

In this immersed state, one experiences an altered sense of time while surfing on the challenges the activity poses. As challenges are mastered and goals met, newer should surface to continue experiencing the flow. The challenges should match with the individual’s skills. Challenges way beyond proficiency can result in anxiety whereas lack of alluring challenges can set in boredom.

Aquaduct - a tricycle to sanitize and transport water

2008-05-28T02:09:00.000-07:00

Imagine rural India where people have to walk long distances, carrying vessels, to fetch water. The water most of the times may not be potable. Can the long walk be replaced with cycling? We know that cycles are low-maintenance and no-fuel means of transportation. How about adding a storage tank and a filter to the cycle? Pretty darn idea coming from IDEO. They have designed a tricycle named Aquaduct which transports, filters and stores water.

IDEO explains how this tricycle sanitizes and transport water simultaneously:
“As the rider pedals, a pump attached to the pedal crank draws water from a large tank, through a carbon filter, to a smaller clean tank. A clutch engages and disengages the drive belt from the pedal crank, enabling the rider to filter the water while traveling or while stationary. The clean tank is removable and closed for contamination-free home storage and use.”

Now I am left wondering how we can adapt the tricycle in Indian context where mostly young girls do the job of collecting water. Can they ride the tricycle with large amount of water stored? In rural area there may not be flattened roads or paths for smooth ride. How would the people fill up the container at the back? Which means do they need to carry extra gear to fill the tank?

I really liked the idea but for it to be suitable in Indian context, there needs more deliberation.

IdeaCampPune

2008-05-01T01:36:00.000-07:00

Often our ideas remain ideas and we are not sure whom to discuss them with. You may have a great idea, but the real challenge lays in finding its appropriate application. Cohesive and divergent thinking is what is required to build ideas from scratch to working prototypes. In the process we need to discuss with people from different walks of life to identify how our ideas can make a difference in their lives. Can our ideas make money for anyone?

IdeaCampPune is a self-organized gathering to share ideas and see them shape by applying divergent thinking. The objective of the camp is to get people from different roles like designers, entrepreneurs, financers, creative minds, technology evangelists, product managers and marketers together to bandy ideas from everyone’s viewpoint. Ideally by end of the gathering we should have ‘proof of potential’ for our ideas.

If you want to be a part of this ideation event, register on http://barcamp.org/IdeaCampPune

Snippets from an interview with Dr Edward de Bono

2008-04-20T23:01:00.000-07:00

This week on Walk the Talk on NDTV Shekhar Gupta interviewed Dr Edward de Bono. Here are some very insightful snippets from the interview.

‘…perception is by far the most important factor in thinking, and research by cognitive psychologists has shown that in thinking, 90 per cent of the errors are errors of perception, not of logic. And if your perception is wrong . . . your logic can be erroneous. Once you change people's perceptions, you change their emotions, you change their behavior.’

‘…major corporates throughout the world develop a habit of saying, 'Put all the information, all the information or data, into our computers, and our computers will analyse the data and that will set our strategy, make our decisions.’ This is very dangerous because unless you can look at the information in different ways, you are not going to make progress.’

Software Branding

2008-02-18T01:18:00.000-08:00

In the intangible milieu of enterprise software, brand perception is acutely related to the emotions triggered by the user experience at all touch points. A user will perceive a brand to be superior when engaged in a good user experience.

So, what kinds of emotions are elicited while interacting with software? The negative emotions which are aroused while interacting with software can be anger, disgust or frustration when they stumble due to bugs or complicated task flows in the software. On the contrary, there can be positive emotions like satisfaction when the user finds it easier to perform a task which is also quicker; astonishment when coming across a very innovative feature (the WOW factor); and confidence as the user thinks that whenever they have similar task at hand, they can trust the software to do it for them.

Here are the ingredients to what you call emotionally charged products…

Engaging, memorable and distinct visual design
Intuitive, useful and useable interactions
Innovative features based on user needs and context
Superior and seamless technology
Easy installations and deployment
Great after-sales customer service

Microsoft has well etched guidelines on software branding for Windows Vista.

Toss colours with your imagination

2007-11-13T06:37:00.000-08:00

Sometimes random browsing can bring up surprising sites. COLOURlovers is a community site with oodles of colour palettes to get inspired by. Designers can view, create and rate colour palettes. There are colour related blogs, trends and articles. I think I am going to view this site in between work breaks to pep my mind.

Expanding Role of Design

2007-10-20T09:46:00.001-07:00

Globalization is linking cultures, economies and people to people. People from the developing nations are getting to see the ‘other’ world and panoply of consumables. To articulate the needs of this changed new world, designers are taking center stage equipped with their design tools. Design today is seen not only as a tool to make products aesthetically pleasing and desirable, but its dimensions are playing a key role in business, society and in people’s lives.

Design has the power to redefine our socio-economic thread. Its methodologies are at the core of business and innovation as it helps creating value and exploring new market opportunities.

In the business realm a good design would help increase sales, build brands which can meaningfully engage with people, find new markets, and innovate new products.

Well designed systems can qualitatively improve the standard of living of those at the bottom of the pyramid. By finding better ways to do things, design can solve needs and add value to people’s lives.

Design should encompass cultural relevance by binding cultural values with the form to make it accepted by the people who are going to use it. Today’s design should strive to be sustainable.

Events related to ‘Design in India’ in the next 4 months

2007-10-09T20:50:00.000-07:00

Source of information: Prof. Ravi Poovaiah from IDC IIT Mumbai.

October 2007
Workshop: by Stanford University, USA
at TATA Management Training Centre, Pune
`Design, Innovation and Manufacturing'
- October 15 – 19, Pune
http://scpd.stanford.edu/scpd/courses/ProEd/innovation/

Workshop: 'Design Workshops' at IDC, IIT Bombay
`Communication Design for IT and Media Professionals'
- October 18 – 20, Mumbai
http://www.idc.iitb.ac.in/events/expo-cd-2007.html

International Student Animation Festival at NID, Ahmedabad
`Chitrakatha `07'
- October 25 – 27, NID Campus, Ahmedabad
http://www.nid.edu/chitrakatha

November 2007

Celebration: World Usability Day at Hyderabad - Includes competitions
- `World Usability Day' hosted by Usability Matters
Organisation (UMO)
November 8th 2007 at Hyderabad
http://www.usabilitymatters.org

Workshop: 'Design Workshops' at IDC, IIT Bombay
`Product Design and Innovation'
- November 14 – 16, Mumbai
http://www.idc.iitb.ac.in/events/expo-pd-in-2007.html

Competition, Conference and Exhibition:
'Pune Design Festival' at Ishanya, Pune
organised by Pune Design Foundation
- November 20-25, 2007
http://www.punedesignfestival.com

Conference: 'User Experience Design' at ISB, Hyderabad
- Organised by Usability Matters Organisation (UMO) with InDeAs
- November 30 and December 1-2, 2007
http://www.usabilitymatters.org

December 2007

Design Conference: `7th CII-NID Design Summit' at Bangalore
Theme – `Design Leadership in the 21st Century'
- December 12-13, in Bangalore at Hotel Taj Westend
http://www.designwithindia.com

January 2008

A Design Tour of India for Design Professionals:
organized by Pratt Design Incubator, USA
`India: Innovation from Necessity'
- January 1-14, IDC, IIT Bombay, Jaipur, Thilonia, NID Ahmedabad
http://incubator.pratt.edu/india/

Technology Youth Festival at IIT Bombay
`Techfest 2007' - checkout the open design and eco house
contest
- January 25-27, IIT Bombay
http://techfest.org/home/

The Tongue Sucker

2007-10-05T09:58:00.000-07:00

‘Tongue Sucker’ which received the first prize from INDEX Awards in the ‘Work’ category is an amazing life saving device. It is designed by a team of four design students from Imperial College and Royal College of Art after the London catastrophe in 2005. The research done by them reveals that a person in dearth of oxygen can die or suffer brain damage in four minutes. When a person gets unconscious, there is a tendency for the person’s tongue to fall back on the throat covering the trachea. There are chances of death by suffocation due to blocked trachea.

The tongue sucker consists of a round red-colored suction bulb made of rubber along with a tube. To use the device the rescuer has to squeeze the bulb, place it over the tongue to the unconscious person and then release the bulb. The bulb sucks the tongue of the victim in the tube facilitating free airway. The red bulb which remains outside the mouth is distinctly visible to the paramedics such that they can reach for help.

The user research conducted by the design team validated that one size of this device fits all the age groups of causalities.

This simple device is economical and can be used by untrained people by reading the instructions on the packaging.

Search for latest cricket scores on Google

2007-09-13T03:47:00.000-07:00

This time Google has something to make me happy - they are showing live scores from the Twenty20 cricket championship!

All you cricket fans just type ‘cricket’ in the Google search box to see the live scores or status. You can also add ‘India’ or a country name of your choice to see the respective team scores.

Get going and enjoy cricket!

An offbeat brand channel

2007-09-02T04:19:00.000-07:00

In India to reach customers also means to reach the vast marketable rural population of India. And Nokia literally did it through what they called as “Consumer education program” in rural India. The van traverses rural parts of India and shows people how to use mobile handsets. The blend of newness, enthusiasm and aspiration keeps the visitors to the van engaged.

Via Business Week:

Nokia is also in talks with the railways for branding train bogies. They will let passengers to experience Nokia handsets and also shop.

A great way of people-brand interaction!

Searching in Context

2007-08-19T05:04:00.000-07:00

I certainly hope to see more and more subject specific search engines coming up which would hem a context (pertaining to the subject) for the user. Still, the ‘one-size-fits-all’ search engines can help the user to avoid getting flooded by a higher proportion of irrelevant search results.

Currently there are models which adopt a method of profiling user interests based on what websites they browse and what links they follow. But this becomes complex because the user searches in various contexts based on the task at hand. May be at one point the user is looking for some business proposal and later during the day is looking to buy a gift for someone.

A model adopted by Clusty.com, form clusters of similar search results. A user can pick from the relevant cluster to drill down to the information needed. Though this approach is certainly helpful, it imposes the site-generated clusters on users, which again may not be something that the user is interested in.

Instead of putting the load on the system to identify the context, I was wondering whether the generalist search engines would allow the user to provide a context of their search.

For example if the user is looking for research papers on neural networks, then ‘research paper’ become the search word and ‘neural networks’ becomes the context to look into. In popular search engines there is a provision of only one input field to enter information one is looking for. If the user enters ‘research papers on neural networks’ in the input field, the engine will treat ‘research’, ‘papers’, ‘neural’ and ‘network’ as independent search words. The initial few results may contain all the keywords, but later results may be obtained by making combinations of some of these search words.

May be I am trivializing the issue a bit too much, but can we not have two input boxes – one to enter the search word and the other for providing the context?

Note that this is not similar to ‘search with all of the words’. In the above example, we are searching only the search word. The search engines should map the user-provided context by parsing web pages and construing a context from the web page metadata.

To give a context while user searches for music, Google has a music search feature. Users have to enter their query after ‘music:’ in the input field and they get search results relevant to music. I hope search engines add such system-generated contexts by identifying popular searches from their search logs to do the least.

Subject Specific Search Engines

2007-08-15T10:10:00.001-07:00

Heck! I am looking for some information and all I have is a ‘generalist’ Google.com. There was a time when I was in awe of Google search engine for its simplicity – the simple one step search, the gigantic result base and that too in fraction of seconds. Phew! But what after that? I still have to spend a huge time getting to the relevant information. Google (or for that matter any other search engine) doesn’t help me reach relevant information quickly.

Websites without any optimization for search engines may never make it to the first few search result pages. May be that information would be helpful to me, but since I don’t get to see it in the first few pages of the search result and I lose my patience, I never reach that piece of information.

In India there are Sunday ‘Haats’ which is a make-shift weekly market where you get everything from grocery, electronics, durables, appliances, clothing to almost everything one needs to buy. The only thing a buyer needs is lot of time to search for the right item from that maze. Instead, if the buyer goes to a particular shop that sells the item, she will spend little time getting what she wants.

Similarly, instead of searching for information in an all-in-one search engine, if there are specialized search engines for various fields, the users can find ‘relevant’ information quickly. To cite a few examples, there can be search engines dedicated to sciences, medicine, or the engines can be product-specific.

This would also make a positive impact on advertising as the advertisers can effectively focus on their audience base. With Subject Specific Search Engines, site owners can list their sites on relevant search engines. Just like advertising on a single outdoor hoarding is not enough and ensuring that the product is advertised at strategic locations; similarly a website should be listed on relevant search engines for better effectiveness.