Cheese Corporate Care

The Infographics Bubble

2012-05-30T12:00:00.000+05:30

The web is changing dramatically and web user’s habits are evolving extremely rapidly. In this era of “Big Data World” and diminishing attention span, it is no longer impressive & practical to research and churn out written information. As a result, web users are getting more attracted to infographics – clearly displayed visual or graphic representation of straight-forward and interesting data. They tend to draw users attention to a particular trend or possibility and help visitors quickly capture the major part of information.

Although their full potential is still in the exploration phase, infographics have started benefitting users, websites & the online community as a whole.

Attractive - People love to see images, graphics & animations on the page. They draw a lot of attention & discussion.

Snap shot – Infographics provide various levels of information in a single figure/graph which acts as a “snapshot” of the whole picture.

Easy - It is easier to interpret a graph or an image than a complex set of sentences & data. Also infographics are easily portable in comparison to loads of text material.

Time – Since they are easy to comprehend, infographics save a lot of time which in turn benefits the user.

Viral capabilities – Capacity of infographics to be shared on social networks and become viral is much higher than ordinary text content.

Increases Traffic – When users “share” and “click” a particular website, it drives traffic to the website which works great as an advertisement. Remember “The Kolaveri Di Phenomenon”.

Benefits Search Engine Optimisation – Any increased traffic will help search engines like Google to index a website higher due to Google’s “Page Rank” algorithm. This increases the importance that search engines place on a website.

The Specialist View- Good infographics display knowledge and position of a website as an expert on a category or topic. It both increases the brand awareness & reputation.

Innovation - Infographics are a marriage of creativity with information. It gives immense joy & satisfaction to both the designer & user to design/study a good infographic.

Here is an example of a simple infographic:

http://www.testking.com/techking/infographics/the-psychology-of-color-must-see-for-web-designers-infographic/

Today, Indian Infographics market is in an embryonic stage. There lies a lot of potential left to be exploited. Government, private firms, business houses & websites all need to display their information, performances, results & comparative indices in a good manner. Users & stakeholders expect them to be comfortable & easy. Colossal amount of information is generating every day which cannot be comprehended through writings & the ever increasing complexities of life will never permit the user to do so...there has to be a quick – fulfilling - handsome alternative – INFOGRAPHICS.

The earliest cave man started with the pictures & figures...

Is evolution cyclical???

Make Indian Websites Beautiful!

2012-03-23T13:08:00.001+05:30

In my previous blog, I focused on the general ‘rampant’ state of ugliness in the Indian websites. Today, I suggest a 3 pronged strategy for the transformation & would like to term it as “Innovation Manifesto”…

MIRROR OH! MIRROR – Indian website appeal to a mass that are utterly involved making India the next superpower. They are very busy. They don’t have time & opportunity for adoration. They overlook ugliness. They lack taste. They lack feedback. How many of you have ever mailed a company regarding their aesthetics??? For us the only concern is the “hanging” of the websites. The latent-undiscovered-epistemological dimension of looking for “beauty & innovation” in websites has never been told to us. So we never seek it & since we don’t ask for beauty, ugliness is served.

I suggest for a Facebook campaign asking users to choose Best 5 Aesthetically Kept Indian Websites of the Year or Cheesecare, in association with a media house can initiate an award for the chosen bests.

OK! – Once the “sentiment” of beauty seeking masses is “communicated” to Indian websites, they’ll introspect. The whole globalized market is about “consumer/client preference” & “preferences” are like Australian forest fires, they accelerate rapidly. Remember Orkut! Also the highly competitive market culture will breed the “demand side innovation contagion”

BOOMERS! – Now is the time to “tap the market”. I strongly believe that every innovation is a delayed necessity. What we were terming as innovation in the first stage, is now a necessity in the third. Indian websites are now restlessly seeking beauty appeal among themselves.

Indian websites should acknowledge the importance of their “face & makeup” in market. Preferences of this net savvy generation are like shifting sands of Sahara. Gone were the days when Obama’s media campaign was an exotic concept, Akhliesh Yadav has done it with his “Umeed ki Cycle” – His Interface with 16% of Indian population through small clippings. If one of the most orthodox & sluggish field of politics is ready to adapt & innovate, why not we???

Why not you???

It is often attributed, that after “Instinct to Survive” the next most important is “Instinct to Adapt”…that is why human beings existed & that is why markets will!!!

Innovate or Perish….

Why Indian Websites are so ugly?

2012-02-20T01:20:00.001+05:30

I read two posts on American car industry today.

The first post, Driven off the Road by M.B.A.s, blames the problems plaguing the American car industry on the fact that the industry is led by MBAs and not the product guys.

The second post by Paul Graham, talks about why American cars are so ugly. I am reproducing the content from graham's post lest you get lost in the rambilisiously long post:

A similar problem explains why American cars are so ugly. I call it the design paradox. You might think that you could make your products beautiful just by hiring a great designer to design them. But if you yourself don't have good taste, how are you going to recognize a good designer? By definition you can't tell from his portfolio. And you can't go by the awards he's won or the jobs he's had, because in design, as in most fields, those tend to be driven by fashion and schmoozing, with actual ability a distant third. There's no way around it: you can't manage a process intended to produce beautiful things without knowing what beautiful is. American cars are ugly because American car companies are run by people with bad taste.

The Indian websites suffer the same fate as the American cars, ugliness. Imagine tolerating Fluorescent Green for the sky instead of Blue. It is amazing to me how the websites, the sole existence of which is justified by their effectiveness in communicating with the user, fall so distorted, faceless and silent. Is the reason same as elicited by Graham? Do the web designers lack the required Aesthetic Quotient? Or is it that the companies earning 10 figure incomes don’t possess the taste buds for the web - chaat.

An ugly website or a website with a messed up UI not only wastes time but also makes the designer/owner look like a fool in the mind of the user, harming his credibility. It is like an envelope without an address on it.

With the country harvesting a crop of lakhs of Engineers every year, most of whom possessing at least miniscule design abilities, isn’t it an irony that the grading system doesn’t give a heck to the ‘design paradox’. The sad truth is we still talk about IQ and EQ. It is high time we roll our eyes on to AQ (Aesthetic Quotient) lest our websites will pinch pennies and waste opportunities to earn thousands.

Agneepath

2012-02-13T08:00:00.000+05:30

Here is a famous poem by Harivansh Rai Bachchan. It is dedicated to those whose life is a tough struggle all the way, but whose resolve is superhuman - Rajiv Krishna Saxena (via http://www.geeta-kavita.com/hindi_sahitya.asp?id=93)

Story of startup world(?)

[Reblog] How to do business in India

2012-02-01T21:34:00.000+05:30

BBC business news has a very interesting video on how to do business in India. Its not business advice per se but more like communication advice and business etiquette.

It really nails how one should present business card when meeting someone.

+ 1 to Cheese Care's training material :)

What makes a good manager

2012-01-30T08:00:00.000+05:30

At Cheesecare, we devote a lot of energy in training and developing the skills of people we work with. Its not a coincidence that Cheese Care alumni either end up going for a higher degree at one of India's top school or end up working at one of India's top companies.

We have focused on improving both job specific skills as well as soft skills. I have found that job skills are easier to improve while soft skills are comparatively harder. Nobody is born an excellent communicator, mentor or a manager, they learn these skills. India's schools are notorious when it comes to improving soft skills, so we spent some time thinking about what can be done. Lack of soft skills is a big impediment to our ability to scale the firm.

We decided to first identify what traits make a terrific manager, so we conducted a survey among Cheeselings and here is the list of responses in no particular order:

Good understanding of issues facing individual team members.
Always has time to discuss & remove roadblocks for individuals and team
Should take problems head on and find a solution
Ability to build consensus and convince all stakeholders
Is fair in dealing with the team and resolving conflicts.
Humility: should always be courteous and patient especially with newcomers
Ensure a healthy workplace free of tensions and stress
Does not under-rate or over-rate capabilities of the team members
Understands strengths and weakness of team members and leverages them accordingly.
Gives prompt feedback and does not wait for the appraisal cycle

I am actually surprised at the responses above. This list is now going to become a part of our regular performance review for managers.

Kindle's impacts on a country's economy

2012-01-10T15:15:00.001+05:30

I recently bought my first book on kindle, and I must say that it was a profound experience with implications way beyond just the simplicity of buying books.

Kindle has the potential to kill the following industries:

Seeds, fertilizers and pesticide industry
Plantations and agriculture
Lumbering
Transportation
Paper industry
Ink industry
Printing machine manufacturing
Printing industry
Book publishing industry
Book retailers &logistics
Paper recycling industry

In all the above industries, jobs would be lost as more and more people buy ebooks than those who buy paper books.

There is another impact - flight of capital. I buy the book from amazon, a US based company, in USD and the book gets downloaded to my device bypassing customs. Indian Govt looses on customs duty + local taxes. Further, while earlier for an Indian edition of a foreign book only royalty and profits would have got repatriated, with kindle the entire revenue gets repatriated.

While one could argue that the negative economic losses is a small price to pay for the ensuing environmental gains, the fact is that kindle would have a more profound impact on economy of a country than I would have imagined.

Good design is like kaali daal

2011-11-30T12:03:00.000+05:30

Over heard:

Good design is like kaali daal. You can get palatable stuff in no time, but really good stuff comes out only after you simmer daal for hours over slow heat.

On the money. The more you iterate, the better you get. And its worth it.

Some friends of mine book exclusively on www.cleartrip.com even though there may be a better deal elsewhere. Just like I cant resist a trip to Frontier Hotel in Karolbagh or Dal Bhukhara at ITC restaurants :)

Forgot Password

2011-09-08T20:34:00.000+05:30

I just got an idea and I thought of blogging it. Its relates to the ubiquitous Forgot password page on almost all the web services.

Currently sites ask you for your login id/email id and then either email you the password in clear text or send you a link from where you can reset your password. Most of the times you have to prove that you are human through a captcha.

The above interaction involves a lot of steps and frustrates me to no end as I keep on forgetting passwords all the time.

My idea is simple. In case the user's registered email id is any of the email services like Google, Yahoo, Hotmail, (i.e. a service which supports OAuth/OpenID), the webservice can simply ask the user to authenticate herself and immediately open up a form to reset the password. Wow.

Feedback please :)

Dilemma

2011-08-01T12:50:00.000+05:30

If you witness a robbery, would you report it to the police?

Would you feel compassion for the robber because he would spend a few years in jail coz of you or would you feel outraged at the crime being committed against a fellow citizen?

What if you are not sure if it is actually a robbery?

What if the robber threatens your life?

What if the robber agrees to share a part of the loot with you?

Would the above answers change if the robber was robbing your own house?

In today's world, things are not always black and white. They are a varying shade of grey. A chief minister legally buys land in an area before a highway is announced through it, is perhaps not committing a crime but is definitely taking advantage of the trust bestowed upon him by the people. A minister buying stock options in a company before changing policies to favor that company, is, while following the law to the letter is breaking its spirit. An employee sharing work issues with spouse would not even know when he is committing breach of confidentiality.

In class VII (or was it X), a complained against a classmate for cheating in the exam. I warned him to not do it as I was getting disturbed, but he continued. I have never forgotten the bashing he received from the invigilator as he denied it. And when he finally admitted to the guilt he was debarred from the exam. Not much harm done in the long run, he is a successful doctor as of today and we are still friends. But on that day, I felt bad. Really bad because I did not want him to loose out a year because he cheated in the exam.

I am in a similar dilemma today. A fraud has been committed. I need to choose between the ethically right vs the stretched version of truth. Now I fully appreciate why integrity breach is considered so difficult to deal with. But you gotta do what you gotta do.

Technology for governance

2011-06-20T21:54:00.000+05:30

In a recent post, Gurcharan Das, wrote about how India has always been a strong society and a weak state. If you have not read Discovery of India, you may not be able to fully appreciate the import of the above sentence, but I digress. The existence of the state is because of the society and not vice-versa.

Unfortunately, in last few decades, the state has not kept pace with the changes in society and while the technological revolution is accelerating the pace at which the society is evolving our governance systems are far behind. I think this is the single biggest reason for failure of governance in India.

For example, Bangalore, a garden city, does not have a single arborist on its rolls because the government has not kept pace with the technological advancements in the field of maintaining tree cover within the city. The city meanwhile continues to loose its green cover at a massive rate of 17,000 trees per year. Had there been aroborist with Bangalore Municipal corporation, instead of loosing trees forever, we would have relocated some of them.

Another such example is VAT vs service tax debate. In a recent order, the Hon. High Court of Karnataka held that when Airtel provides broadband service to its consumers, it is 'selling' artificially created light energy via optic fiber cables! Since VAT is a state subject and service tax is a central one, the two tax authorities are often at logger heads only because the regulation is ambiguous especially in cases where technology is blurring the boundaries between services and goods.

When India enacted its constitution, one can argue that we probably got best in the world constitution. The constituent assembly reviewed every single form of government spanning across the history of the world and borrowed heavily from constitutions across the world. That was what the Indian society wanted after years of oppressive rule. However, at that time, the founding fathers did not foresee a need for a mechanism where civil society, as different from the political class, could propose legislative changes. Probably, they did see a need, but could not see how it could be possible given our massive population spread across the length and breadth of the country.

With the technological revolution followed by the information revolution, the boundaries between the policy makers and the general public needs to blur. One of the best run policy making body of our times has been TRAI. They really deserve an equivalent of the Magsaysay award on their approach to new policies and initiatives using their website and consultation papers to build up the legislation based on feedback received from the general public as well as all the stakeholders.

Today, the civil society movement has caught the fancy of the urban middle class and the popular opinion seems to be against the government. The government is on the back foot seemingly fighting against the demands of the civil society members when they could very well incorporate the popular sentiments in the drafting of the Lokpal bill using internet. Iceland is drafting its entire constitution in consultation with their online population. While the penetration rates of internet in India are dismal, the same is not true with cell phones and it could be used equally effectively in making of the law.

And if you hand them a tool, people would overcome barriers to use it to improve governance. Here are ten ways in which governance can be better by use of technology:

Allow any member of the public to initiate an idea for a law, a change in existing law, debate with other citizens and then propose a bill to be made into law using technology as an enabler, much like Ideastorm.
Use a CRM like system for tracking and delivering services.
Use a zip dial like service to gather quick feedback on government officials as well as politicians. Use this feedback in their annual assessment of performance.
Just like Citibank's website, make it possible for every citizen to request any service over the web. Last month, I spent close to three hours to get an IEC licence which if online would have taken me a few minutes only.
Use Airtel Money like service to distribute financial subsidies to the needy rather than subsidize delivery of goods.
Outsource and automate every single administrative function to machines and people. The biggest advantage of internet is that the data entry is done by the person requesting the service. In the example of IEC licence quoted above, since the process is not online, a govt clerk entered the data on my physical application form onto the IEC database, wasting valuable government resources. On the other hand, the income tax department today uses automated systems to process millions of returns, their officials manually scrutinizing only a small percentage of cases flagged as suspicious by the system.
Link every single point of sale terminal in the country to an automated system harvesting data on seller, buyer and prices to check tax evasion.
Give an incentive in terms of tax break for buyers for making purchases using electronic payments.
A complete overhaul of the responsibilities and duties of the government officials in light of technology evolution.
Use mathematics and statistics to draw up models while planning to deliver services especially to forecast the pent up demand accurately. (See commuters in Delhi metro packed like sardines)

The key here is to use the power of crowds for both planning and implementation.

From a post on VC circle:

Although, the anti-bribery legislation in India has been on the statute books since 1988, successful prosecutions resulting in imprisonment are more the exception than the rule. The Prevention of Corruption Act 1988, prescribes penalties ranging from imprisonment for up to five years to an unlimited fine. However, fines imposed for criminal offences in India have seldom served as a deterrent on account of their quantum.

If the state does not keep pace with the rapid changes in the society, society would use any means available at its disposal for asserting itself. It could be a peaceful civil society movement or Ramdev's Fast unto death blackmail or the maoists in Eastern Indian state.

Se7en

2011-06-01T13:44:00.000+05:30

Since the time I watched the movie Se7en, I have been fascinated with how to exploit the seven weaknesses of biblical proportions in UI design and the world of business. My hypothesis is that successful business models build on gratifying one or more of these sins.

Infact you can build a highly successful web service by combining more than one of these weaknesses. Twitter for example combines the basic human need of self expression and laziness (who is going to write more than 140 characters). Urbantouch beautifully combines greed, sloth, pride and envy. We did design work for Rangde, based on this philosophy and the design had a great outcome in terms of user engagement and conversions.

Brad Feld recently noted this in his article on gamification of universe, which I think has origins in this hypothesis (that is a subject matter of a different blog post though).

If I ever do a PhD thesis, exploiting deadly sins for the purpose of UI design is a topic I would surely consider :)

My vision for Cheese Care

2011-02-28T18:01:00.000+05:30

I wanted to take this opportunity to articulate the vision I have for Cheese Care.

Cheese Care’s mission is to:

Use scientific temper and creative design to make world a more beautiful place

My vision for Cheese Care

I want to build an institution which makes a significant impact on how global businesses interact with their end customers.

This brings us to a very pertinent question. Which opportunities would we exploit?

Visualize a surfer riding a gigantic wave in an ocean. That is the culture which I want to build. A culture of learning, fun, daring, entrepreneurship. We would look at gigantic opportunities where we can have a hell of a time riding the wave.

On people

I want to build an institution which takes in minnows of today and makes them into giants of tomorrow. I believe in mentoring people, teaching them everything I know, learning from them and positively impacting their careers.

That is the legacy I would like to leave behind. That would be my contribution to the world. If 20 years later they look back and count the time they spent with Cheese Care as a pivot which transformed their lives and careers, I would call myself successful.

Near term

In near term we would continue to focus on user experience for web and mobile applications. This is a significantly large opportunity and I want Cheese Care to become the leader in this space. Our immediate focus is to build a profitable, nimble, self sustaining organization which is known for both research as well as perfect execution.

On organization

My near term vision is to build an organization with the right set of partners - both internal as well as external. Cheese Care would continue to grow. We would build the organization which is responsive to the needs of the market and we would seek external partners who would help us realize this vision.

The feedback loop

2011-02-25T23:50:00.000+05:30

A friend of mine made an interesting observation the other day. He said that before he learnt how to drive a car, he thought that it must be incredibly hard to drive it. He always thought that the number of variables you would have to keep in the head while driving a car should probably make it possible only for the smartest of the mere mortals to drive it. His biggest surprise was when his (illiterate) cook took the car for a spin and even though she was driving it the first time, it did not take her a big leap compared to her Hero Puch.

I kept on thinking about this observation when I realized that it is the feedback loop which makes it so easy to drive a car. Without boring you with a control theory lecture, simply speaking, the driver in real time adjusts the input based on perceived output. So, when the driver is turning towards left, if he turns the steering wheel too far left, he sees it, and, immediately adjusts the input. If he has to slow down, he can either break hard or slow depending on how fast he is going and how far the hurdle is. Also, we as human beings are very good at learning and adapting to a behavior. So, after a few times, we just know the right amount of pressure to apply to the breaks. Remember, it feels a little different if you try your hands at a different make than the usual car you drive? Its exactly because we use our learnings rather than the feedback once we get accustomed to a situation.

Now just imagine,

If you had a real time feedback when learning something new, how much less time it would take you to learn it.
If you are a first time entrepreneur, and you have a management dashboard which can in real time tell you how you are performing, then your chances of success are that much better.
If your UI had a real time feedback mechanism, how much easier it would be for you to dictate how the user is performing

Rewards are also a control mechanism, but this post is not about rewards.

Linkedin does a good job in terms of giving a real time feedback when you build a profile with a profile completeness bar. Build something in your product and you can have a great engagement model for your customers.

Personal touch

2011-02-21T12:35:00.000+05:30

I recently received the following mail from a vendor of ours:

Dear Customer,
I wanted to personally ask you what has been stopping you from signing up for our XXXXXX Services.
1. Have you not been happy with the price?2. Do you think our product sucks?3. Have you not been able to understand how the application works?4. Do you think the product will not fit your workflow?5. Anything else?
As a fellow-entrepreneur, I request you to help me improve the product by making it better to suit your needs.Meanwhile, We have also reduced our pricing ( starting Rs. 999/- a month ) and have worked out some attractive discounts if you choose to pre-pay. Please reply to the e-mail or call me at XXXX ( I’m a kind man and like chatting with awesome people like you )
Regards,XXXX

While it is great to see this mail from the CEO, and, even though I wanted to talk to the CEO concerned regarding why I did not sign up for his service, this email just put me off.
1. It was evident it was an automated email. The from address and to address was same - I was in bcc.
2. Even if it was an automated mail, it would have been great if the mail was addressed to me rather than the 'Customer'. Dont all email automation software do that?
3. "I’m a kind man": reeks of arrogance. Kindered soul

Would I pick up the phone and call him up? I dont think so. Even though the intent was good, the execution left a bad taste in my mouth.

When you send out any formal communication, do not ignore the personal touch.

Adieu my friend

2011-02-08T14:43:00.000+05:30

I have some news to share to those who are not aware of it already.

Shayak, my friend, my business partner, and you can even say soul mate, has decided to call it quits to do something more creative, more crazy, more wild and hopefully less stressful.

It has been a wonderful 2+ years of hard work with him and let me tell you we are going to sorely miss him. While I was out drinking beer(1) with customers, he was doing all the necessary hard work to build this company from scratch. He was the conscience keeper, quickly reminding me of all the necessary work needed to be done every time I let myself be carried away with my day dreams.

I have worked with a lot of smart, intelligent and creative people, however, there are a very few who are able to funnel all the smartness, intelligence and creativity towards building something insanely great. Needless to say he has left some big shoes here at Cheese, which can not be filled easily. He was a true entrepreneur who built a system without a precedent, without guidance, without training - a system which works even if the master is not there conducting the symphony. Its a matter of pride that we have built a strong team and an even stronger management team which would carry forward his vision. Our business has reached an inflexion point where we need to focus on our core competencies and calmly execute to achieve our goals.

Shayak has promised to continue to engage with us on strategic issues. For example, he is focusing right now on building a great training program for UI designers, a task he was not able to do justice to due to his continuous involvement with day-to-day operations.

I wish him good luck for the future, and I know whatever he does, he would achieve greatness. The end of a journey is a beginning of another :)

(1) While I dont drink beer, the expression is priceless.

My innovation, your idea

2011-01-11T00:06:00.001+05:30

My apologies for taking a hiatus from blog-posting. Not that I post very often and not that this may not happen again but I feel like I owe my readers an apology J I’d hit a writers’ block of sorts but now I’m back to your spam folder (for all you guys subscribed to RSS)

It was that time of the year not too long back – the time to be good. In the midst of shopping and wrapping presents I was hit by the ‘combine and recycle’ bug. I had had enough of Xmas 2009’s one-eyed teddy staring spookily at me from virtually every angle I re-located him too. He would do nothing but stare! I also had enough of the horrendous, miniscule ‘Made in China’ (complete with pink lead paint et al) sunglasses that Secret Santa gifted me in 2008. So, hit by the recycle epiphany and with some help from my sewing skills, post-Xmas 2010 Aunty Anne is now the proud owner of revamped Ibiza Teddy .

“Asthma doesn’t seem to bother me any more unless I’m around cigars or dogs. The thing that would bother me most would be a dog smoking a cigar”

– Steve Allen

A new idea isn’t something that the universe has never seen before but moreover they are recycled and revamped ideas others had that were not successful for whatever reason.

One man’s innovation is another man’s idea. Applying old ideas into new ways can be considered as innovative.

Here are some suggestions by Jack Foster that will help you combine and recycle ideas.

Look for analogues:

Is your problem similar to other problems? What is it dissimilar to? If the USP of your product is its aesthetics, what are the most attractive and most repulsive (one-eyed teddy is copyrighted) things you can think of? Can you compare it to them?

Break the rules

Every activity has its rules and conventions and ways of doing things. They may not be etched in stone but they are in people’s minds. Most of the great advances in science and art are a result of somebody breaking those rules.

Van Gogh broke the rules on what a flower should look like.

David Ogilvy broke the rules on how copy writing should sound.

Play “what if?”

“What if?” is the game many creative people play when trying to come up with a different way to present the benefits of a product or a service.

What if we turned the product or service into a person, what kind of a person would it be? A man? A woman? A truck driver? An artist? A basketball player? What would that person say? How would that person act? What would that person sound like?

Look to other fields for help

In A Whack on the Side of the Head, Dr. Roger von Oech wrote these insightful lines:

“Every culture, industry, discipline, department, an organization has its own way of dealing with problems, its own metaphors, models, and methodologies. But often the best ideas come from cutting across disciplinary boundaries and looking into other fields for new ideas and questions. Nothing will make a field stagnate more quickly than keeping out outside ideas.”

Take Chances

Getting an idea usually means combining things that were never combined before – in other words, taking chances.

One-eyed teddy still glares spookily at me with his 360º vision each time I drop by at Anne’s. Its bonfire night this Saturday and I have a set of spare keys to Anne’s place. Seems to be the most conducive situation for me to break the rules and take a chance.

CheeseStorm

2010-12-09T17:25:00.004+05:30

Hello

We are delighted to invite you along to the next CheeseStorm (formally known as the Multidisciplinary Design Clinic).The idea of the CheeseStorm is to bring together students and graduates from across all disciplines to share a common space and share expertise across different fields. The economy needs T-Shaped people (‘vertical’ specialist depth with the ‘horizontal’ appreciation and understanding of other disciplines and professional contexts) to work together to navigate through rising complexities, solve complex problems.

It will be a chance to share your past work, share future ideas and visions, share advice and lots more with each other in a creative and informal space.

We will be using a presentation format called Pecha-Kucha to help you introduce yourselves and your work, we ask that you use thepresentation template, which you get on registration mail and fill it with anything that you want to talk about. Remember the presentation will automatically move on every 20 seconds so you need to be quick!

The event will take place on the following date at:

Cheese Studio: #13, MCHS 14th main,15th cross, Sector 4, HSR Layout, Banglore - 560102

Saturday 11th December 2010

1:30 - 5:30 pm

The number of participants is limited. Mail in your acceptance and something about yourself as early as possible at:

deepakkhetan@cheesecare.com

The list of upcoming projects are mentioned below and there will be opportunities across the year to get involved in projects and internships so do make it clear to on the day to the team if this is something you'd be interested in.

Service Design:

Services are systems of value creation which have specific implications and experienced overtime through different touchpoints. Designing them is a holisitc, iterative and multi-disciplinary process. Service Design is an emerging discipline that collaborates discipline, apply design thinking and co-design services with an explorative, generative and evaluative design approach in which service designers are engaged in the process to observe, seek problems, understand the systems, identify needs, frame problems, match constraints to possibilities, work collaboratively, explore and appreciate solutions, weigh alternatives, and communicate their ideas verbally, graphically and physically.

Upcoming Service Design Project Themes:

HealthCare Network

Indian Game Design

Community Network

Schools ReDesign3G Mob. Experience

Upcoming Fashion Apparel Brand

We look forward to meet you...

A Network for Service Design in India event.

Hello, is there anybody out there?

2010-10-13T20:24:00.000+05:30

You sent out your UI mockup to your client for feedback. In response you got dead silence. You waited for an e-mail, a phone call or at least a sneeze that the monsoon carried with it. Then you sent out a gentle reminder saying “I’m concerned that I haven’t heard from you” though you wished you could execute other ideas (those inspired by you religiously watching Lethal Weapon). You met with more dead silence. You can get them to do nothing. How do you deal with this situation?

I was recently faced with this kind of a situation where I would’ve even welcomed feedback like “My grandma/goat/neighbour doesn’t like that shade of orange so please change it”. I just wanted the period of hibernation that’d put even a polar bear to shame to end. For the love of God! Oscillating between indignation and de-motivation I did a Google search to see if I was the only unresponsive-client magnet or if there are others as well who are pushed to the brink of plucking their hair out. The good (or bad) news is that I’m not alone.

Apparently a lot of big names too have to deal with this. Some clients promise to get back to you, saying something along the lines of "Sorry, I've been swamped due to a crisis that took over priority etc, I will revert to you tomorrow" - and "tomorrow" could be 54.64 days later. By this time you’re nearly convinced that life does exist on Mercury since 1 ‘Mercury day’ is equivalent to 54.64 days here (thanks to my latest obsession with Wolfram alpha).

LinkedIn offers some answers to this quandary.

It's official: You're just skimming through this post

2010-09-21T23:04:00.001+05:30

You were taught to read from left to right unless you studied in Hebrew. But is that how users read content on the web? Studies have shown that most users read in an F-shaped pattern. User’s eyes fleet across the screen real estate in seconds, scouring for information that stands out and grabs their attention. Due to our hyperactive online nature this is most likely what we'd read – the introduction, the first few sentences thereafter and then we hurriedly scan vertically through the rest of the page.

Here’s what can be done to mitigate this imbalanced attention confiscation.

Superflous introductions are hazardous – If users don’t need it, don’t blabber about it.
Have meaningful sub-headings – Headings help users scan down and see exactly the article/paragraph contains.
Highlight keywords – Use hyperlinks, graphics, colour variations, typeface variations; and take care not to abuse.
A shade of gray works well for that information that isn’t crucial but yet needs to be present.
Bullets give life - Use bulleted lists, nothing scares a web user more than having wall of text to scale.
Break the information into paragraphs.
Ads shall follow the article. Having them jut in the middle interrupts the readers thought train.
Use figures in place of numbers. Users scan for facts; a ‘17 year old’ catches the user with greater agility than a ‘seventeen year old’.

Jakob Nielsen found in a study that although people spend more time on pages with more words and more information, they only spend 4.4 seconds more for each additional 100 words. By calculating reading rates, he concluded that when you add more verbiage to a page, people will only read 18% of it.

Still reading? You're probably in a dwindling minority. With social media-users becoming synonymous with web-users it is getting challenging to keep users to remain focused on a page without them getting distracted by email notifications, tweets and re-tweets, IM’s and checking on a neighbour’s sheep chomping on cabbage whilst their horse choked on a pumpkin.

Did you know that Steve Jobs quit Apple to rusticate in the hinterlands of Tibet? Well no he didn’t, I was just trying to grab your attention to make your eyes to do the E-shaped pattern. If you’re still reading that is.

By the power vested in me as a Designer ...

2010-09-08T00:28:00.003+05:30

Holding my chin up not out of pride but due to my hallucinatory notion that it’d help me inhale lesser of the partially burnt oxides of carbon and nitrogen spewing out of autoriskshaws’ adulterated-gas-exhaust while on my way to work, I’m constantly paranoid by sustainability or the lack of it. ‘Green Graphic Design’ by Brian Dougherty reminded me of a seminar which I presented during my days as an undergraduate student. The seminar was titled ‘Business and Environment’. Both; the book and my seminar, address my paranoia.
Can a designer be the catalyst in achieving sustainable development? I’m not talking about just using ‘green materials’ or about thinking twice before passing the processed tree through ether or about configuring solar panels out of your old CD’s. I’m talking about the power of our ideas. The ideas and messages that we as designers conceptualize and create have far more potential green power what amelioration our material choices can bring about.
At the nexus of values, attitudes, needs and actions, designers have the potential to act as facilitators. We have the power to scream out an announcement from a billboard, tickle our audience, simplify a complicated system, and demonstrate a process. Its ability to construct, not destruct, its search for new options and opportunities, its ability to connect to powerful emotions, its optimism, is what makes Design a tool strong enough to convert tough CEOs. The services we design have immediate impact through direct social engagement. This is where we can influence our clients to build value-based brands which promote the flow of green materials and energy. These companies will in turn educate their customers on sustainability. This is strongly emphasized by Brian Dougherty. In the next 10 years every designer will be a ‘green designer’ to some degree according to him. There is a growing awareness that every decision we as designers make exerts an influence of some kind, whether intended or not.
Before my commute to work would cause an irreversible 120° tilt to my cervical vertebrae I am optimistic about this shift in the status quo towards sustainable solutions. By the power vested in me as a designer I now direct you to Think Green! The environment is not somebody else’s problem, it is our problem.

Making a "presentable" Presentation

2010-08-29T14:09:00.000+05:30

We all have looked at, and perhaps even created, some really crappy presentations at various occasions. Here's a few points to keep in mind when you start doing your next.

Cover it Well: It is very important to have a stunning cover slide which would clearly convey the agenda of your talk and establish you as a sensible and mature speaker so that people would want to listen
Show and Tell: When you are speaking, use your slides as an assist with graphs, images and other visuals instead of cluttering them with text and reading it out. Nobody should feel that you could have saved their time by simply mailing them the PPT.
Bullet, But do not Fire: It is good to use bulleted lists on your slides to convey key points or messages but make sure that the points are displayed one-by-one as you talk about them. You do not want your audience to be reading ahead of you.
Animate your Body, Not your slides: Out of all the special effects and transitions available in PowerPoint, about 98% are not suitable for a professional presentation. It is not cool to have your audience chasing your text before they can read it. Trust me, very few people would be that playful.
Be Kind to the Eyes: Try using a comfortable color scheme; a dark background with light text supposedly is less strenous to the eyes of your audience. Also, stick to non-artistic fonts which are easy to read, and use a size visible to people of all age-groups. Ideally, the font size should be half the age of the oldest person in your audience.

Always remember that there are very few people who can actually make a good presentation but I believe most people can make, what I would call a "decent presentation." I hope this information would help all those who want to.

Vendor relations

2010-08-23T12:44:00.000+05:30

Here is a quick post to call out and thank one of our customers Cosmic Circuits.

After working with 50+ customers in last two years, I can tell you that not all customers treat vendors professionally. No, I am not talking about delayed payment (which is quite common in the Indian scenario, by the way), or reverting timely with the inputs on iterations. I am talking about mundane stuff like TDS certificates. After spending considerable time in July running after (annual) TDS certificates, I can tell you that it came as much more than a pleasant surprise when Cosmic Circuits issued us a quarterly TDS certificate.

While Indian laws allow a payee to request for a TDS certificate three months after TDS deduction, I have never bothered with a quarterly certificate hoping that the accounts department in the client's organization would take take care of it and worst case I would get the TDS certificate in April/May/June. But here are a couple of shockers. A foreign private bank who is a client of ours never gave us a TDS certificate for the payment made in 08-09. (to be fair to them, Form 26 AS does show that they made a TDS deposit with the government). A venture funded private company did not issue a TDS certificate to us (and also their employees) till last week of July this year.

In this scenario, I would like to thank Cosmic for focusing on finer aspects of vendor relations. When we signed them up as a customer, they told me that they want their vendors to grow with them. So much so that one of their cofounders focuses exclusively on finance, IT and admin although he is an engineer by training. I am not surprised that they follow a very well defined process for handling these important aspects of running a business.

Compatibility Issues

2010-08-20T23:24:00.000+05:30

“Lecture notes of today’s class will be available on your e-mail account, please check it out” said Prof. Wong. “Check your (Univ) e-mail” was one of my most sincerely loathed words. Interacting with my mailbox was one of those ‘urghhhh’ experiences. Well yeah as a child I did enjoy solving jigsaw puzzles and that was because at the end it’d form a Tintin or a Tyrannosaurus. But with my mailbox I’d get into an abysmal labyrinth. The screen shot below should help me explain this better. The routine sign-in would take me here.

Screenshot of my mailbox as viewed in IE

- I never could figure how to ‘select’ mails to delete/move them. (checkboxes??)
- The side ‘preview’ was in fact as much as I could get to see. I never could read a mail without scrolling left to right and top to down (not necessarily in this order).
- I overworked my brain, trying to remember which mails I’d read and which I hadn’t (An average of 50 mails a day didn’t work too well in my favour)
-What function did those ‘flags’ serve? While I support patriotism, reverence to an unidentifiable union isn’t something I’m comfortable with.
Just navigating, wading; to find those lecture notes was painfully unfriendly. And then one day IE crashed on my ever faithful laptop. Firefox swooped in to the rescue. I did the routine sign-in and voila!

Screenshot of my mailbox as viewed in Firefox

So the expletives did work, incantation is no myth. Or is it? Up until then I had no idea that browsers can be so authoritative. Just by changing the browser, the look and feel of the UI was radically transformed.

Web browsers do not render pages pixel by pixel. They merely are translators that read the entire code and produce an output depending on your code. There are differences in the code interpretation. So it looks at the way that a page is built and decides how to interpret it. Some browsers support certain coding conventions and not others.Therefore you should check the way your website looks on different browsers and operating systems. Unfortunately, there is no easy solution for that. You should check the specificities of each browser that fails to display your website correctly and make the necessary adjustments to your code.

Adobe Browserlab does a pretty good job by giving you screen shots of what your web page will look like across different browsers. There might be many other such providers.
In conclusion, you should test your websites on as many different browsers and operating systems as possible. It is important so as to ensure all your visitors can enjoy the experience you've designed.

Design – Logo for Barcamp Bangalore 9

2010-08-20T17:45:00.007+05:30

‘Nine’

‘A cat has nine lives!’

‘Eveready logo’

‘Nine planets… Err, now Pluto is no longer a planet!’

‘Cloud No.9’

'...'

BarCamp Bangalore 9 (BCB9) is happening on 18-Sep-2010 and they are conducting a logo competition. I was brainstorming for a logo idea.

Much later, from the phrase ‘talk of the town,’ I came up with the following logo.

Base of the design is a ‘9’ in Century Gothic font. The appearance of '9' is changed so that it looks like a single quotation mark that represents 'communication.'

A speech bubble is incorporated into the design that contains the BarCamp logo. The placement of the elements is manipulated in such a way that ‘Bangalore’ on the logo is speaking about BarCamp. Clearly 'the talk of the town!'

Following is an attempt on the branding of BCB9.

Photographers:

'Auto rickshaws on the way to Mysore' by Matthew Logelin
'Hand tag' by Marcelo Silva
'Billboard' by Asif Akbar

Please vote for this design by visiting this page on BarCamp Bangalore website.