White Space

More on compliance and inconvenience

2015-01-02T15:14:00.000+05:30

Uber in India is now compliant to RBI regulations but has become less convenient. I actually don’t mind the 2FA (2 factor authentication) for Indian credit cards, where you have to enter a PIN when used at a ‘Point of Sale’ or a One time password (OTP) that’s sent to your phone when used online. It’s actually a great security solution for one off payments. But there are situations when the 2FA becomes inconvenient especially when you are paying at a restaurant. Then there are online services whom I trust with my credit card details to be saved for quicker transactions, like Cleartrip and Uber. While transacting with these services I'm already inside one level of trust and password security, so having to enter another password for the transaction to go through is unnecessary. Uber is a service that’s designed to have credit cards saved online and charged whenever required so that the user need not have to fumble with his wallet when he reaches the destination. Uber’s philosophy is to offer a service that works like “everyone’s private driver”, but RBI’s 2FA rule just kills it. As I always say, rules are made to be followed but they should also be allowed to be broken whenever it makes sense.

Apparently a proposal has been submitted to RBI to exempt a certain amount of rupee transactions from the 2FA. Let’s hope for the best.

I hate when the user experience is compromised in the name of security. I feel violated as I get touched for security checks every time I go for a movie or to a mall. Security is absolutely important but should also be invisible.

Captcha

I hate when websites make me enter a captcha every time I do something. That’s sloppy engineering. Google doesn't ask me to enter a captcha every time I login; they do only when I fail to enter the right password the second time. Even a more secure ‘Google with 2 step verification’ allows me to set trusted devices so that they don't bug me to enter the OTP all the time. Even better, Google’s Recaptcha now directly asks the users whether or not they are robots without forcing them to read distorted text and type it into a box.

Expiring Passwords

I hate when online services force me to change my password every now and then for security reasons; they are seriously missing the plot. If you force me to change the password and that too with weird rules, I’ll have to come up with something creative all the time and start writing down the passwords so that I don’t forget them. That makes it insecure.

HDFC Bank forces me to do this. They also have a forced user name that’s difficult to remember. It’s high time they understand that the most secure accounts are the ones with a combination of usernames and passwords that the user remembers in his head. Luckily Citibank and ICICI banks don't force me to do these things and they have security built in at the right points; like an OTP to add a new ‘money transfer recipient’.

Security Questions

HDFC Bank also forced me to answer some security questions the first time I used them for an online payment. The best online buying experience should end with the quickest checkout process so that last thing I want to do during the checkout is to answer the payment gateway’s security questions. Once I even tried to go past that step but I never got the security answers right. I don’t know how but I always get the answers for the security questions wrong. It’s true that I set them up in the first place, but I forget the answers when I need them.

Usually online services ask me to answer security questions when I forget my password. But Apple asks me to answer these questions even to change my password! My Apple ID is so secure that even I can’t do anything with it. How secure is a service that doesn't allow the account owner to change the password easily?

I don’t remember Google asking me these questions any time. They take my mobile number and alternate email address and send me instructions to create a new password. They also periodically check with me if this information is valid. That’s what I call well designed security.

PIN on Phones

The first time I set a PIN for my phone was when I joined this company with a strict BYOD security policy. The moment I setup my work email on phone I was forced to set a PIN. From that day on my phone became super secure but inconvenient to use as I had to always punch in that 4 digit number before doing anything with the phone. I always wondered why is it that even I have to enter a PIN to open my own phone, but only till recently.

The sweet Lollipop update on my phone now has a ‘Smart Lock’ feature that allows me to set trusted devices, places and even faces. Now my phone doesn't ask for a PIN when it’s connected to my ‘Android Wear Watch’ or my car music system. This is exactly what I wanted.

Apple Pay works more or less the same way as Google Wallet in terms of user workflow, but I really like the way Apple has implemented the security part of it. Behind the scenes, Apple uses something called tokenization that replaces the actual credit card number with a special number for making payments, but the best part of Apple Pay is the user authentication done using the ‘Touch ID’ which is far more secure and convenient than entering a 4 digit PIN.

Security should be part of the core user experience of your product and not an afterthought.

How to lose weight in 7 days?

2014-11-29T20:06:00.000+05:30

I don't know, if God gave me a chance to change something, that’s what I would ask for.

I don't have a fit body and that’s one thing I've never been proud of. It’s something that has made me go low on self esteem from high school days, especially when it came to matters involving people of the opposite sex.

So what, go to the gym right? Yes I have tried that many times. But most of the time I discontinued after going for months as I didn't see any result or I simply got too lazy to wake up in the mornings. After some time I was convinced that gymming wasn't my cup of tea and stopped trying.

I was an active kid till I moved to the Gulf where there were less places to play. I got used to sitting indoors with the AC on more than being out, playing in the heat and gradually put on weight. I came back to India during high school years and in no time lost all the weight I had put on. However everyone who saw me told me that I looked better when I was plump and I so wanted to gain back all the weight I had lost. I started eating four oversized meals. My mom gave me tablespoonful of ghee, chyavanprash and all other kinds of unhealthy stuff to help me achieve my goal. But they never worked and I remained a scrawny kid throughout my high school.

I started putting on weight again when I started working. The long hours of a sedentary job, eating at odd times may have triggered it and all the childhood unhealthy eating must have fuelled it further. Basically from then on I have only gained weight and never reduced. Today even though I'm not obese, I'm positively fat with a big belly and a body that’s better kept covered. I don't over eat but have all 3 meals on time. I don't binge on butter, sweets and fast food but I continue to sit for long hours at work. I don't exercise per se but do have long walks but clearly it’s not helping. I know people who live a similar lifestyle as mine but they are not fat. So I'm sure there is something about my body that’s working against my wishes. I've always wondered, is there some medicine or solution that could fix this problem of mine and millions of others or if there isn't, shouldn't there be one?

I'm pretty sure there could be medicines that could fix this problem, in a healthy way of course! I know that my body has a mind and it does things for a reason. This medicine could trick the mind to increase my metabolism and burn off whatever the body doesn't require after a point. Something that doesn't allow the fat to get deposited in my belly. This would allow me to continue my normal lifestyle, my sedentary job and eat whatever I want.

If a medicine can't do this, could technology help? My favorite number on my car’s dashboard is the average mileage of the trip I’m on. Based on that I know if I'm driving optimally. If there could be a body index that can be measured to know what my current rate of putting on weight is? Using this body index, if I could track and figure what effect my daily activities, namely eating, sitting, posture, etc. would have on my weight and belly. Like an activity tracker band but for people who are not so active but are still curious about watching their weight. Is this possible?

At some point in my career I would like to work towards finding an answer to this.

My smart time has come

2014-10-08T10:00:00.000+05:30

I totally get it

I had stopped using my Swatch after the Android wear was announced. I wanted to know what is it to not use a watch before jumping on the smart-watch bandwagon. I wanted to know if my watch was just an ornament?

I did miss it at times especially when I was out. I had to pull my phone out to see the time and missed knowing the time just by glance. So the reason I pulled my phone out other than making a call or messaging someone was to look at the time and go through the notifications. This was exactly the pain point that was solved when I started using the LG G Watch. I could check the time and also the notifications and use my phone far less than before.

The Good

I’m glad that it doesn’t do too many things. It shows notifications from all the apps on my phone and I can also act on them. Then there are Watch specific apps that can also write into my notification feed based on context. That’s it! I can't or wouldn't want to compose a new email on my watch nor do I want to play games on it.
The voice actions are good but I'm not sure if I will end up using any. But the way it’s designed is so ‘right’!
As I now check my phone fewer times, the battery lasts longer. Earlier the battery on my phone would usually drain out by 7 p.m, but now at the same time it’s at 50% battery.
I have this habit of leaving my phone at the desk and going around discussing things at work. Now when I get a call, I can reject the call on the watch and run back to the phone only if it is absolutely necessary.
I also like the way it tells me that ‘it’s time to go home’. I used to miss this Google Now notification on the phone previously, but now it’s magical.

The Bad

My LG G Watch is given by my office as a reference device. Even LG calls it a Developer’s reference device. It looks like a toy watch. But I’m not sure if it’s worth paying 17k for a better looking Moto 360 for what it can do. I bought my Swatch for 6k and used it for around 7 years and it’s still working. I agree the Moto can do way more than the Swatch, but if I switch to the smart-watch bandwagon; I will have to buy a new watch along with a phone every 2 years. That’s kind of ridiculous, isn't it?
The “OK Google” hotword has never worked for me. It may help me in making a call when I’m driving as my phone is locked. But I expect Android L to fix some of these pain points.

Yeah, I couldn't think of any more.

What I missed

A hardware button to get to the home screen / watch-face quicker is what I missed the most! I’m not sure if the buttons on the Moto 360 and LG R Watch can do this.
There should be a way to put my phone on silent from the watch.

Final thoughts

If the only real value proposition of a smart watch is to notify me at the right time, then I think the Pebble would do it better than Android Wear watches. Of course the hardware looks shitty and the interface is not rich but I think there is something fundamentally right about their e-paper approach. The non-touch interface is functional and works with both iOS and Android (not a deciding factor though). Also the battery lasts for a week and it’s cheaper too. I think if the Pebble hardware goes through a serious design overhaul, support round and good looking watch-faces, then it has a very good chance of winning this race.

My tryst with Google Glass

2014-07-10T18:32:00.000+05:30

Wouldn't it be amazing if what I need to know is right there in front of my eyes?

I'm a big fan of RoboCop and his heads up display and right from my childhood I always thought it would be super cool for me to have something like that. I think as an idea Google Glass is anyones or at least every geek’s dream come true. But is it usable in it’s current form? Not exactly. I think the Glass has a long way to go before it becomes mainstream and also socially acceptable.

How does it feel like?

… as ridiculous as those idiots who walk and talk around with a bluetooth headset.

This is what my Boss who gave me the Glass told me when I asked him about his reactions. This is infact right because if you don’t wear glasses regularly, wearing just the Google Glass makes you look absolutely ridiculous. For someone who wears glasses I think it doesn't look that bad. Look at Isabelle Olsson’s picture above. It won’t be long enough before brands make glasses that are compatible with the Google Glass. What makes it then ridiculous is when you start interacting with it.

You look autistic

This is the comment I got from a friend who was observing me interacting with the Glass tapping and swiping at the side of my head and winking at people around. It also looked like I was talking to myself.

I was not able to wear the Glass properly to start with. I wear prescription glasses for myopia and it’s impossible to make anything out of the Glass’s prism display without glasses. So I somehow managed to wear the Glass over my glasses. Even though I could see the display it was not exactly like the way I was expected to use it. I understand that the real value of using Glass is when I start wearing it all the time like my prescription glasses. At one point I had contemplated wearing it over my glasses all the time but the terrible battery life didn't help. Every 10 minutes it either went out of power or got heated up and asked me to switch off. It also had it’s random power failures. I wonder how the explorers manage to wear it all the time.

How does it work?

When I wore the Glass for the first time, it asked me to install the Google Glass app on my phone. The app was supposed to show me a QR code with the WIFI settings in it. But it didn't work. So I tried using the Glass Setup page on my computer and it worked. Once it got connected it gave me options to do some things like ‘Send a Hangouts message’, ‘Take a picture’ etc. It also asked me to pair the Glass with my phone for it to work on the move. After pairing with the phone it gave me options like ‘Make a call’ and also started showing notifications from the phone. I installed some Glassware using the phone app and the Glass main menu started giving me more options like ‘Tweet’, ‘Share on FB’ ‘Check In on 4sq’ and ‘Send an email’.

I tried tweeting but it didn't get posted to Twitter for some reason. I took pictures and accidently shared some of them on FB. I did manage to reply to a Hangout message I received. The camera was on wide angle all the time but the picture quality was really good, so ended up taking some nice ‘point of view’ shots. I checked out the navigation feature and it worked pretty well but I couldn't put it to some real use while driving. The Glass had problems in understanding my English accent even though Google Now on my phone did a better job at it. I made calls using the Glass and the voice quality was bad. My friend couldn't hear me at all. I played a song using the Google Play Music app on the Glass but it was pretty pointless without a proper earphone.

Overall a patchy experience.

How I want it to be?

The best thing about the Android Wear apps is that the primary way to use them is when they show me a contextual notification.

I think right now a smart watch is the most socially acceptable gadget that can show me a contextual notification. But I still think Glass is the best gadget to do it if it can do it the right way. But it goes downhill from the point it allows you to ‘book a cab’ or ‘reply to an email’ by talking to it. It feels so unnatural to talk to my glasses or watch. According to me devices like a SmartWatch and Glass should only show me contextual notifications in an ambient manner without me asking for it. That’s it. Everything else I will do on my phone as it’s almost an accepted notion that I can talk to a phone and do things with it. So here is what I think the Glass should be to become useful, usable and socially acceptable.

Make it more wearable by not making it stick out. Target it only for people who wear glasses as an add on augmentor. Let’s see how it would look like then.
Show me information at the right time without me asking for it or doing the autistic tapping, winking and scratching on my head.
The only job of an app on the Glass should be to show me contextual notification.
The only “actions” I do on a Glass should be restricted to ‘taking a picture’ with just a tap and ‘navigating through the notifications’ by swiping. No Tweeting or Sending email. Just transfer the pictures to my phone instantly and I'll share them from there.
Better battery and cooling down issues. I'm sure it’s just a matter of time.

Nevertheless I think the Glass is an engineering and design marvel. It’s easy to be an armchair critic but I can actually imagine the pain they took to make the Glass as we see it today. Just that it’s not ready for prime time and I'm sure Google also knows it.

Inside Out or Outside In?

2014-05-24T17:55:00.000+05:30

Even though I had earlier designed solutions for mobile, it’s while working for CloudMagic I got to learn about the subtle nuances of how things work in iOS and Android. It was indeed a challenge to design the app’s features keeping the OS restrictions and possibilities in mind but was equally exciting to just know about them and the thinking behind.

Apple is all about hardware and Google about software

If you observe closely this is evident in lot of the thinking behind how similar looking features are implemented in both the operating systems. The most interesting of the lot is push notifications. They are so similar on the surface but absolutely different under the hood. Let me try to explain in the context of an email application.

iOS

Apple’s own apps on iOS have superpowers but 3rd party apps have a lot of restrictions. For starters 3rd party apps like CloudMagic are not allowed to run in the background forever. The native email app can. This is to make sure that 3rd party apps don't abuse the OS resources to make it slower and drain the battery. So for an app like CloudMagic the only way to receive and update new emails is to wait till the user opens the app and download the emails from the server. Here is where push notifications come into the picture. It notifies the users about the new mail outside the app and swiping on it would open the app to start downloading the new email.

Push notifications are only possible for email apps with a server component, like CloudMagic. It checks for new emails in the server and intimates the Apple Push Notification Service to send a push notification to the phone. This is the reason why Sparrow doesn't support push notifications and hence will download new email only when its open.

1. Push notifications show up as a list on the lock screen. I can either swipe on a specific notification to go to the app directly or just unlock the phone. After that the list disappears. I also have the option to set notifications from some apps appear as an alert too.

2. The missed notifications continue to live as a list grouped under app names in the notification center which is absolutely out of sight. The app has the ability to remove the notifications from the list once opened or they will continue to remain there forever.

3. I can customize the notifications to an extent in the Settings app which is detached from the original app. But things like changing the alert sound is not in there. For this reason, almost all 3rd party apps end up giving notification settings on their own which adds to the confusion.

4. To circumvent the ‘out of sight’ problem, the notifications can also add a number badge to the app icons. This again behaves different from app to app; again configurable from the app’s settings as well as from ‘Settings app’.

Android

Android apps can have an always on agent called a Service, stay in the background to interact with the OS when the app is not active. This agent can either keep checking emails on timed intervals or like in CloudMagic can listen to push notifications sent from our servers.

1. When a new email is received, our server passes it to Google Cloud Messaging which in turn pushes a notification to the phone.
The agent receives the new email information from the notification and pokes the CloudMagic app to wake up from its slumber.
The app wakes up with the new email information in the background and start downloading the rest of the content from the respective email servers and keep it ready to be read.

2. Once the email is downloaded, the app shows a message in the Notification Center. This is biggest difference between iOS and Android. In Android the notification center is completely controlled by the app and every notification is a micro widget in itself. It’s up to the app to decide what, when and how the notifications should be shown. This is how CloudMagic shows a single email notification that can directly take you to the new email and update it with a grouped notification when more emails are received. The format of the notification, it behavior, sounds and the action buttons, basically the entire notification experience is controlled by the app and not by the OS. Of course the framework provides templates for the format for consistency but its up to the app to follow it or break out to give something better, or even worse. Hence the settings to control notifications remains in the app itself.

3. When the notification area receives a message, it shows a visible animation and then continue to show as small icons on the status bar till they are removed. So the notifications are kind of out of sight (non intrusive) but not out of mind.
Once the user has accessed or dismissed a notification on one device the same notifications are removed from other devices owned by me.

Android notifications are well thought through than iOS

Android notifications were designed with the objective of letting an app effectively notify the user about an update. If I remember right, when iOS started supporting 3rd party apps, there were no push notifications. It would have been an afterthought that made them add push notifications later in order to poke the user to open the app and load new content. Later it went through a lot of iterations to become what it is today. It’s still messy and largely unusable.

Starting with the right problem is key for designing better solutions.

What's the logical end of your product?

2014-05-04T23:37:00.000+05:30

Simplify, even when the natural inclination is to keep expanding.

This quote I read somewhere recently has made a profound effect on me. It's something that I always believed in but just that I didn't know how to express it in words. As a product designer I believe that my job is to design software solutions that will simplify human lives. The more simpler the solution is, the more it would simplify lives. In today's world we have a lot of things craving for our attention and they all keep us busy. Our attention span is on an all time low while dividing our time among all of them. Thats why it's important to make products focus on doing smaller things the most easiest way possible. This doesn't mean all complex problems should be ignored. What it only means is that someone who is in need of a simple solution need not understand and use a bloated solution that can also solve the simple problem. Simple solutions have a value of their own. It need not become complex to become more valuable. Thats why we should be clear about the the logical end of the product we are designing.

Whenever I design products, I try to also define what the product should not be. That way I make it clear that what exactly are we solving and who we are going after. So does that mean when the product is developed as per design, our job is over? No. Thats when we have to start seeing if the product can further simplified to make things easier. Of course the product has to undergo changes in order to keep up with the times. But it never should go beyond its original soul or the logical end, as I call it.

The best example I think of in order to make myself understand this philosophy is Cars. Every car made has a very specific target audience, purpose and price point. Manufacturers only add or remove things to further simplify the driving experience and also do facelifts to keep the car relevant to the times and trends but they will never transform a hatchback to a luxury sedan. Nor can I, as a user, ask the manufacturer to add a boot to my hatchback coz I like it that way.

The best example of this in the software world is the recent unbundling of the Google Drive app on mobile. This is what google says about the unbundling...

...to make it easier for you to quickly find, edit and create documents, spreadsheets, and presentations on the go ..... Starting today, you can download new, standalone mobile apps for Docs and Sheets... Need to find a spreadsheet? Go to the Sheets app. Need to create a document? Go to the Docs app.

Foursquare also has announced that they are going to split their app into 2 serving specific functions for fewer users. Mailbox's new version added some new features that would further enhance their GTD goal and at the same time also removed some features to make it more focussed. Zomato has changed a lot to integrate social into restaurant finding and has become so much better and simpler. My favorite Cleartrip has launched more standalone products that would help people plan their trips. However I feel Cleartrip has kind of failed in further simplifying their flagship product. Even though it's still the most usable airline booking site in India, it doesn't have the simplicity it used to have once upon a time.

It's tough to understand this philosophy in software as we can easily get drawn into adding more features based on user feedback and matching competitor products. There is nothing bad about adding new features but it should only be to further simplify the way currently people use our product. Everything else is scope for another product.

The TV as we know it has changed in my house

2014-04-06T21:09:00.002+05:30

Last year we upgraded our old tube TV to a Sony Smart LED TV. My idea of going for a smart TV was to watch a lot of videos on demand. The TV had a stripped down YouTube app but was a PIA to use it with the TV remote. Later I had to dump the smartness of my TV and instead used it as a display for my laptop connected with a HDMI cable. That's when my wife discovered the Project - Free TV site and started watching all her favorite TV series online but plugged into the tv. It was almost perfect. No getting back home on time, no re runs and no missed shows. Just go online, select the show and episode and watch whenever we have time. Hooking up the laptop on to the TV had its own quirks though. The laptop went out of power as we were watching and then had to connect the charger to make the whole setup a wired mess.

Enter Chromecast, the wonder device from Google. Chromecast converted any regular TV with a HDMI port into a Smart TV. Chromecast enabled us to keep the laptop docked to the charger on the study table somewhere inside but cast the Chrome browser tab on to the TV, thus making us watch the shows without the wired mess. Also allowed us to cast Youtube and Google Play movies from our Android devices on to the TV anytime. Our TV has more or less become like radio now. We watch the TV channels if we don't have anything specific in mind, all other times we search on the internet and chromecast it on TV to watch. We also came across this site viooz where all the latest English movies can be streamed free of cost. It also has some good Indian movie collections.

Should TV channels be worried? I don't think so. Instead they should embrace this phenomenon. It's an opportunity for them to make more money. I really wanted to watch the 24 hindi series last year, but couldn't as I kept on missing the show times and also coz of my December vacation. When I got back, I searched all over the internet for the episodes and couldn't find them anywhere. What if Colors made all the 24 episodes available on Youtube along with advertisements? That would have made some additional revenue for them and also made people like me happy. TV channels in India should open up their content more on YouTube, Google Movies and iTunes. Also make their mobile apps Chromecast friendly. Its also the most effective way to fight piracy.

TV has changed in my house and its going to change in every house, quite soon. TV channels and content creators, are you ready for the new TV revolution?

Smartly driven

2014-02-15T23:34:00.000+05:30

Whenever I go abroad I make a point to use public transport to explore that place. Back home in Bangalore, we seldom use public transport as it’s inefficient and less comfortable. Our recent trip to Australia was no different. It was absolutely a new place for us, but we chose to go by trains, buses and trams and never took taxis, of course with the help of Google Maps and other public transport apps.

One sunny afternoon as usual we looked at Google Maps to spot the nearest bus stop and the exact time the bus would arrive. The bus arrived on the dot and we got in. We went to the driver and told him where we wanted to get down and he told me the fare and also that he accepted only cash. I quickly started taking out the money from my wallet and started fumbling with the coins. Sensing my discomfort the driver smilingly said…

Just calm down. Take your time. I’m not in a hurry.
This was surprising for me. Back home I've seen bus drivers and conductors being rude and screaming at passengers for not giving proper change or not getting in or out quickly.

After I got the ticketing done I sat down super impressed and started observing him more. The bus reached a busy shopping area and a lot of people started getting in. I understood that the system worked on mutual trust. There was no one to check if the passengers had really taken tickets. Tickets were issued to those who approached the driver, that’s it. He smiled at everyone. Stopped the bus till everyone got their tickets and seats. Once everything was in order he closed the doors and started the bus. Then I saw a lady running towards the bus waving at the driver suggesting the bus to stop. I was expecting the sweet driver to stop the bus but to my surprise he didn't and drove away. I felt a bit bad.

Then I started thinking about why he didn't stop for the lady and what would have happened if he had. If he had let the lady in, he would have had to stop the bus till the ticketing was done. That would make the bus 2-3 minutes late for the next stop. Continuing to do this would make the bus run late. Suddenly his behavior started making a lot of sense to me.

Your customers love you for the way you are, what you believe in, the product you have built, the problems you solve, the features you have, the features you don't have and for the happy experience of using it. It will not be the same if you start blindly listening to what they ask for and change things in the fear of losing them. Then you will lose all the qualities for which they loved you in the first place.

5 things Credit Card companies can do for better user engagement

2013-08-28T11:00:00.000+05:30

1. Home Page as a Pinboard of great things money can buy

Instead of a banner busy christmas tree home page which is absolutely useless, it can be a constantly updated curation of great things to do using my credit card. Eg, A map showing the stores having sale, happening bars, restaurants, events based on the time of the day.... Hard to resist items that can be bought on the web, eg on Flipkart or Myntra. Great getaway ideas based on upcoming long weekends.

Basically the home page can be a great discovery service for things you can buy and get discounts or earn points using the credit card. Potential customers will find this as a sure shot reason to jump to the next tab to look at the different credit cards and apply. Existing customers will visit the site to discover interesting stuff and not only once in a month to look at their statement.

2. Social

The same curation service they can extend on social networks like Pinterest, G+ and Facebook. On Instagram they can do roundups of the different events and also showcase products. Allow customers to post tweets like "I lost my card. Please block" or "I'm going abroad and will be using the card. Please don't block." from authorized handles. Authorize FB to show friends who have shown interest in curated products on the home page.

3. Quick loyalty points redemption

Dont hide the loyalty points inside some statement. Show it as clear scannable number in the header, along with the credit balance. Show me the numbers changing based on my activities on the site, like Cleartrip's split view price counter that changes based on my selection. Show me a catalog of products I can redeem my points on by just one click. If I'm falling short on loyalty, allow me to pay the rest using my card balance.

4. Better Statement & Payment

Make the statement super scannable. Bring up the most important numbers and make the details go into the background. Like Cleartrip's Air ticket design. I like ICICI Credit Card's statement, its very scannable. In both billed and unbilled statements, allow me to modify the expense description to something I would remember. There were many times I wondered what the hell I did with my credit card at Yum Brands. And above all a dead simple way to pay the credit card bill.... think Cleartrip Expressway.

5. Better on the go

Most of the time when I'm at a store, I'm not looking at paying my credit card bills. But I'm thinking credit balance. Show me this information upto date damn quick; without making me login all the time. Simple way??? Get onto iPhone passbook.

Can Samsung's success be attributed to Android's popularity?

2013-05-22T00:00:00.000+05:30

Like every other Android fan I have also been in iPhone vs Android fights where I have gotten into heated arguments about the advantages of Android's open and cloud friendly architecture. But then I quickly understood that the advantages which I thought were great didn't even make sense for an average iPhone user. Eg How I could set Chrome browser as my default browser on Android and how on iPhone it cant be done. At that point the iPhone user asked me why would he use Chrome browser as he was happy with Safari. There has also been an instance when an iPhone power user in US told me that a research says Android users have low IQ. This made me think.

For normal computer users an Operating System is how they experience it. User Experience basically. In that case I think pure Android can only be experienced on a Nexus Device or any device with the Stock UI. Android on every other phone has the OEM's take on the user experience. Eg Samsung's Touch Wiz UI mimicks the iOS UI but lacks the simplicity of iOS or pure Android. It has more features, crapware, Samsung's own app store and major flaws in hardware design too. Similar issues with other OEMs.

People who are hardcore Android fans always try to get Nexus devices or the more adventurous ones go for some good phone locally available and manually install an experience (ROM) that's close to stock.

Who are real Android fans?

Real Android fans are actually geeks who are Google fans and power users of Google products. Their life runs on Google products, sync files and information on google cloud, use Chrome, develop on Google App Engine, active on Google+, follow and get super excited by Google I/O conference, appreciate and use Google Now. They follow tech blogs, read about new apps and try it out immediately. If its not yet available on Google Play, they side load it and use. As power users of Google products Android is the right choice for them to safely expect seamless usage and also support the above said use cases. As Nexus phones are designed by Google for pure Android experience, Nexus becomes the obvious choice for a real Android fan boy.

Who buy Samsung (or other) Android phones?

Mostly people who really don't know much about Android. They just need a fancy phone with better features (apps) than their old Nokia phone. They see a Samsung Android phone as poor man's iPhone. Most of them don't even have a Gmail id. They don't know Google Play exists. They haven't installed/updated an app in months. They are not online all the time and also switch off GPS to save battery. They use it predominantly to talk, SMS, Facebook, chat on WhatsApp, take 13 mp pictures and transfer it to their computer using blue tooth. I'm not kidding. For these users the next phone could be a Nokia Lumia. Of course there are exceptions in this group, but more about them later.

Why do Samsung phones sell like hot cakes?

The good thing about Samsung phones are they are not late to market. When they launch their flagship phone, viz S4, in US by the next month its available in countries like India. Also they have a phone with all kinds of hardware combinations at every price point which makes it easy for people to get access to smartphones. Whereas Google is not very gung ho about bringing Nexus devices to emerging markets like India. Its pretty funny coz Android sees a lot of adoption in India and other Asian countries than US, which is predominantly an iOS market. HTC One is apparently a great phone but its no where in sight in this part of the world. Its because of this reason Android fans who run out of patience by waiting for Nexus phones to come to their countries, go for Samsung/Other Android phones. The recent announcement of Samsung Galaxy S4 with stock Android will be a huge relief for Android fans who struggle to get their hands on pure Android.

Samsung allows everyone to own a cheaper iPhone. And that's why they are successful. Its not the love towards Android nor is it because of their eye tracking feature. That's why they think they can continue this success with their own OS also. If Apple comes out with a cheaper iPhone for the emerging markets, Samsung will definitely be in trouble.

Piracy has to be curbed by easier access to content! And not policing.

2013-04-27T22:30:00.000+05:30

The story goes that Steve Jobs wanted CD drive slots on iMacs instead of the tacky trays. But soon Apple was forced to add tray drives as CD writers were not available in slots. An unhappy Steve Jobs wanted to know why a CD writer was so important for iMac, a consumer device. He got to know people were ripping Music album CDs to distribute/share/own select individual songs. This also lead to mass piracy in the Music industry and they were bleeding. Jobs then went on to convince the industry big wigs that customers should have the ability to own individual tracks and not always albums. He also provided a platform called iTunes Store where the labels could officially sell individual audio tracks for economical rates for the users. Customers would browse or search through a huge archive of good quality MP3 songs on iTunes store, buy and manage their playlist and sync to their iPods. This experience was obviously way better than the effort anyone went through to find people who bought the CDs, ripped and shared on the internet, with the right quality and also without the risk of getting virus. People didn't mind paying for this great experience. This also lead to similar services in the US which revived the music and movie industry.

Indian film industry is going through the same problem right now. Technology advancement, broadband and mobile penetration have made piracy flourish. And whats the industry doing about it other than crying and being offensive? Have they really thought about the crux of the problem? Are people really happy about buying bad quality pirated DVDs or downloading movies on Torrent? But what alternative do they have? Coming to cinema halls? Do they really think its practical and economical for everyone to watch all movies in cinemas?

OK I cant talk for everyone but I'll talk about what I think here. I really dont like encouraging piracy but I also dont want to go to cinema halls every week. That means I'll be really choosy about the movies I watch in cinemas and would mostly opt for a big happy movie with super stars etc running that weekend. I really wanted to watch movies like Jolly LLB and Da Thadiya but I missed them as I didnt want to go through the effort of going to the cinema, finding some company and spending big money. Also Malayalam movies are shown on unholy show hours and they disappear after the first week in cities outside Kerala. I really wanted to encourage these movie makers but I dint have an option. Yes I can wait for months till the DVD comes out but by then the fizz is gone and I can rather wait for it to come on TV. Also I dont want to buy DVDs and then figure out storage space for them. I'm not saying Cinema halls are unnecessary. There is indeed a need for them as the main outdoor entertainment medium other than malls in India. But there has to be parallel medium in Home entertainment. These movies should come out on DVDs and Internet as early as possible which will help customer get access to the movies easier and they will definitely wont mind paying little more than the amount they pay for bad quality pirated DVDs. This will definitely curb piracy.

I'm surprised that the Indian movie industry has still not woken up to this fact. They rather do policing and we all know what policing can actually help achieve. One regular answer I get from everyone is its not easy. Well nothing is easy in life. Even for Steve Jobs it was not easy. He had to go from label to label to talk to the executives and convince them to do it. Someone has to take a step towards it. The new generation movie makers should do something about it if they want to sustain. I know Apple and Google have started their movie stores in India but looks like they are not serious about it. Ek Tha Tiger and English Vinglish are the latest movies available out there.

My friend Sreejith Nair has taken a bold step towards this by starting up CinemaTalkies.com, a Hulu like on demand online streaming service for Malayalam movies. However the movies there work only outside India and it doesn't have the hot from the oven new movies. I talked to Sreejith about this and he said his vision is to have simultaneous releases and make them available even in India but he had to make a start somewhere. Offering good quality streaming service for NRIs itself was a great achievement. I really hope the producers realize the potential and satisfy movie fans like me who live outside Kerala. And if this works out, I'm sure movie producers all over India will take notice. Its hight time now.

3 things that will improve Indian Railway user experience on the move

2013-04-21T19:59:00.001+05:30

I know there are various value added high tech services offered by Railways and 3rd party services targeted towards transparency of information but I havent found them handy when I'm badly in need of them on the move. Btw I havent done many rail trips in a long time but whatever little I have done and whatever I have experienced when I go to see off / receive people from stations, I thought of these 3 medium tech solutions that will ease out some regular user pain points on the move.

1. Countdown Timer

Most of the time I dont know how much time I have to board the train which leads to a mad rush at the door step. Also as a passenger I'm not comfortable getting down from the train to get something from the shops at the platform as the good old mobile vendors who used to get food near the coach windows have disappeared.

Count down timer LCD displays on the platform showing how much time I have before the train leaves will help me in this situation. These counters should be prominently displayed on the platform along with the displays that show coach numbers and platform number. If the train doesn't leave on time the counter should go into negative which makes it clear that the train is delayed. This needs to be there on all stations, no matter big or small.

2. Current ETA at a station

Current ETA (not scheduled) of a train at a station is mostly displayed at the entrance of railway stations but not when you go on to the platform. I have seen some main stations showing information on the platforms like the ones you see in airports but not all stations do this. There are these small stations where long distance trains do a quick stop but the officials there are perpetually clueless about the train running status. Also as a passenger its important for me to know the time my train would reach the destination station. It particularly gets difficult during late nights.

There are several SMS based queries offered which is too difficult to figure out on the move. I dont know if this is already there but I just want a simple service where I can send an SMS with My Train Number and My Station Code (not bloody std code) and I get a reply saying where the train is right now and as per the current running schedule what time it will reach my station.

This service should be prominently advertised on all ticket print outs, coaches and on platforms.

3. Coach Position

Finding my Coach Position at a station is another painful activity when you are rushing to catch your train. Also at the insignificant stations, the officials have no clue about the coach positions of long distance trains.

Again in the above SMS service I should be able to add My Coach Number and the reply should give the platform and coach position along with the ETA.

Skeuomorphism vs. Pure Digital

2013-03-06T15:58:00.002+05:30

I would like to call the opposite of Skeuomorphism as "Pure Digital" and not "Flat Design", atleast till we get the right word for it. Even in real world there are things that are flat.

Skeuomorphism is also a style of designing digital interfaces but using real world visual metaphors. Eg make a digital button look like a real world button or make a digital clock look like a real world clock. I’m not a hater of Skeuomorphism but that style restricts interaction and visual designers in making full use of the digital world where there are no real world rules.

Eg by basing your design on the interaction and visual elements of a real world analog clock, you are not allowing yourself to think how you can show the time (I didnt say clock. Clock is real world) in a fresh new more intuitive and fun way without losing the goodness of what a real world clock conveys. If you think ‘pure digital’ then you may be able to come with a completely new take at it. Digital is new and we just realized that there is more potential. Like how we started web design using print principles but then now realized it wont scale for all digital devices. There is no concept of scaling in print.

Rus Yusupov, the creative director of the Vine video sharing app, said.

Old things are beautiful, but new things should look, well… new. That’s why Vine doesn’t have a play button. It also doesn’t have a pause button, a timeline scrubber, a blinking red light, or dials and a brushed-metal finish to give you the impression that you’re using a dusty video camera.

Android Designer Roman Nurik did a “fun exercise” to see how skeuomorphism stacks up to some of Dieter Rams’ ten principles. Its Interesting.

10 Products where Creativity pushed Technology

2013-03-05T10:00:00.000+05:30

The other day at work, I was asked to come up with a compact list of things that can be put under the title "Creativity pushed Technology". Now it was creativity and not design. As creativity is a word thats used in a bigger context than design, i wanted to know what exactly it meant. The wikipedia definition of creativity is

Creativity is the impetus behind any given act of creation

which i thought can be loosely translated as

an idea or an intent to create something that will solve a problem or re-imagine an existing solution.

And this is what I came up with.

iMac

Chic & Not Geek; All in one consumer device.

Translucent Tear Drop & Not a Beige Slab – The cost of the case was three time more than a regular computer case. The different colors also made mass production tough. Engineers came up with 38 reasons why they cant build it.

In 1998 it had 233MHz G3 processor, 512MB L2 cache, 32MB RAM, ATI Rage IIc graphics, 4GB hard drive, tray-loading CD-ROM drive, 2 USB ports, stereo speakers, a funky mouse, garish keyboard and, of course, a 15-inch CRT display all built around a semi-translucent blue shell. Consumers immediately responded by ditching the boring, beige alternative, and soon iMacs were brightening desktops everywhere.

No Floppy Drive. Instead had USB and DVD Slot drive

Determined to let users "express themselves in a new way," the iMac picked up five fruit-inspired colors (Strawberry, Blueberry, Lime, Grape and Tangerine ) for its first major revision.

Gmail

The email service that revolutionized not just email but web applications as a whole in the coming years to come. It was a internet service with a lot of firsts, in both technical and design.

With an initial storage capacity offer of 1 GB per user, Gmail significantly increased the webmail standard for free storage from the 2 to 4 MB its competitors such as Hotmail offered at that time.

Individual Gmail messages, including attachments, may be up to 25 MB, which is larger than many other mail services support.

A search-oriented interface with labeling/tagging and not folders to organise. Mails had "conversation view".

Gmail pioneered the use of Ajax. First time we saw web pages not refreshing after every click.

The Gmail Labs feature, allows users to test new or experimental features of Gmail. Users can enable or disable Labs features selectively. The architecture of the UI is so fluid to accomodate the Lab features.

Gmail's spam filtering features a community-driven system: when any user marks an email as spam, this provides information to help the system identify similar future messages for all Gmail users.

During the early months of the initial beta phase, Gmail's well-publicized feature set and the exclusive nature of the accounts caused the aftermarket price of Gmail invitations to skyrocket. According to PC World magazine, Gmail invitations were selling on eBay for as much as US$150, with some specific accounts being sold for several thousand dollars.

As of June 2012, it is the most widely used web-based email provider with over 425 million active users worldwide.

iPhone

An iPod, a phone, an internet mobile communicator in one.

Completely did away with a tactile keyboard like the smartphones at that time. Instead, the hallmark feature of the iPhone was its 3.5 inch multi-touch screen that worked well on finger touch. It completely took out the need for a stylus from a touch screen device. Hell it didn't work with a stylus.

Beautiful piece of art. Even though it came out with way lesser features than a Nokia phone at that time, people jumped on to buy it. Soon became a style statement.

Tap, Swipe, Pinch, Shake, Accelerometer, Gyroscope, Compass, Pull to Refresh, Proximity sensor, Viewport, Webkit, Rounded corners - We learnt a new language.

Apps and App store. The app ecosystem became the benchmark for every other operating system out there. Not only mobile.

At a time when most smartphone browsers provided users with a dumbed down browsing experience, iPhone enabled users to access the entire Internet as it was meant to be viewed.

iphone also gave us Android and we saw Nokia and Blackberry vanishing from the landscape. iPhone was without a doubt one of the most disruptive and influential products to ever hit the tech market.

iRobot Roomba

Cleans floors, so that you don’t have to. Re-imagined vacuum cleaners.

The first robot people actually needed.

Design and robotic technology put to use to the everyday chores of sweeping, vacuuming and washing floors with the touch of a button.

They have sensors that allow it to prevent itself from falling down stairs, change its direction when it bumps into an obstacle, and detect exceptionally dirty spots on the floor.

In 1997, using their understanding of cleaning and low-cost manufacturing, 2 engineers who had the idea of affordable cleaning robots for home use, built a proof-of-concept robot to prove that this was a fruitful line of research. A team was assembled to develop the world's first affordable home floor cleaning robot. Over the five years from prototype to product, the robot that became iRobot Roomba changed considerably. After many long nights and a lot of hard work, iRobot Roomba, the world's first affordable home vacuum cleaning robot, was introduced on September 22, 2002 to widespread public acclaim.

Kinect
Turned the human body into a game controller.

Changed the way how we play video games.

It enables users to control and interact with the Xbox 360 without the need to touch a game controller, through a natural user interface using gestures and spoken commands.

Kinect is also used in other solutions where natural human interactions have to be captured.

Kinect holds the Guinness World Record of being the "fastest selling consumer electronics device“

Tata Nano

The cheapest car in the world that doesn't look flimsy or inexpensive.

Ratan Tata, who had the idea of building a car costing one lakh rupees, gave an engineering team three requirements for the new vehicle: It should be low-cost, adhere to regulatory requirements, and achieve performance targets such as fuel efficiency and acceleration capacity.

GKN Driveline India made the driveshaft -- the component that transfers power from the engine to the wheel. The team spent a year developing 32 experimental variants to create the perfect driveshaft for the Nano.

The engine was designed three times.

The body had to be changed because Ratan Tata, over six feet tall himself, wanted it to be easy for tall people to get in and out of the car. The body design went through hundreds of iterations, then at the last minute the car length was increased by 100 millimeters!

The purchase price of this no frills auto was brought down by Frugal Engineering.

Announced as the least expensive production car in the world, Tata aimed for a price of one lakh rupees which was approximately $2,000. Only the very first customers were able to purchase the car at that price. As of 2012, the price for the basic Nano was around Rs 150,000.

Square

Enabled food trucks, cab drivers, farmer’s market vendors to accept credit card payments

The card reader is a plastic device which plugs into the audio jack of an iPhone, iPad or Android mobile phone.

The original inspiration for Square occurred to Jack Dorsey in 2009 when James McKelvey (a friend of Dorsey at the time) was unable to complete a $2,000 sale of his glass faucets and fittings because he could not accept credit cards.

Perfect marriage of an idea to solve a real problem, design, technology, creativity, mobile, social and web

Square literally disrupted the Point of Sale system market in the US.

Nest

Made temperature control easy, efficient and beautiful!

Thermostat that learns and automatically adjusts based on time, location, presence of people.

All the user has to do is turn up and down a few times.

Beautiful so that you can show it off at home

Energy Saver

Connected to Wifi, you can control the Nest from web and mobile app. Does Self Updates.

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Yeah they are just 8. I'm still searching for the next 2. Suggestions?

Predictions for 2013

2013-01-20T18:44:00.000+05:30

Looking back at what I predicted for 2012, I'm happy that most of them except mobile payments were bang on. This year I think it will be the year of marriage of physical and digital world and so my predictions are going to be in that space. I may also repeat a lot of things I talked about in 2012 but with a slight twist.

Alternative to Traditional Banking

I said Mobile Payments will pick up in 2012. Well there was a lot of activity in this area last year but I think it will take some more time for this to become mainstream. 2017 if I go by the Forrester report. I don't think carrying a wallet is a big problem but I really don't mind transacting in the stores using my phone as it may make one thing lesser for me to carry and secure. I would like to manage my credit card payments on the cloud, preferably Google, and use it anywhere (online or offline) and have a better experience at that than the ones SBI, ICICI and Amex gives. There are other advantages also by doing this.

Get ready to leave your bank.I think the most important step towards this would be to prepare the user to a whole new way of managing money on a non banker's cloud and other technologies like NFC without changing much. Google has realised that and thats why they are going to come with the Google Wallet Card. Square and Paypal has people doing this already. Apple's Passbook is also first trying to introduce the idea of having passes / cards digitally. I think the most ambitious and promising in terms of end to end experience in this space is Simple.

The Age of Context aka Serendipity

As predicted Google made a mark with Google Now in 2012. Google Now is actually a context aware search engine that searches through public and personal data like Gmail and gives answers, reminders, instructions and recommendations most of the time without asking. As predicted Google also made a mark on their voice capability on Jelly Bean and Google Now. But instead of being a talking personal assistant, voice was just a part of the entire serendipitous experience of Google Now. This is indeed going to improve in 2013 especially when Key Lime Pie comes out in May.

A better life with every search.Facebook is next in the line provided their Graph Search works as promised and also my friends and I enter enough information in the form of 'Likes'; 'Checkins', 'Life Events' and other Profile Information. Google is better positioned here as it can understand my favorite brands by just looking at my google search history and also my purchase invoices on Gmail. It also knows my location if I use Android along with many other things. I dont have to explicitly tell Google about it. However Google doesn't really have a lot of information about my friends. Thats where the disconnect is.

Is there a company that can bridge this gap and be a winner in this space? There is one company and thats CloudMagic. CloudMagic will come with a substantial announcement on this by 2013 end.

Internet of everyday things

In 2013 we will see more and more everyday things around us re imagined powered by internet without having to add another screen and crappy embedded interfaces but managed by our existing devices with ever evolving web interfaces. Nest the thermostat that learns is a start.

Nexus Q will make a come back towards the end of 2013 but only after Google Play Music Store gets enough music and users around the world. Its a good example of how my home music system can connect to the internet to access my playlist I otherwise use on other devices. My iPod dock right now is device dependent. Also management of the playlist while the iPod is docked is a pain. Have you tried searching on iPod Classic? But then how will Nexus Q know whose playlist should it play? Thats when NFC comes into the picture. When I touch my Nexus phone on Nexus Q it actually authenticates my credentials for Q to connect to the net and get my playlist. This will also make my phone and Q pair and make the phone a remote control for Q over the air. This can also be combined with Google TV box. But we have to wait and watch if two Turkeys will make an Eagle.

Listen to your world, talk to the Internet.What I'm more excited about is things like Twine. This Kickstarter project is a small square box with Wi-Fi and a whole array of expandable sensors that emails, tweets or texts when a event is triggered. This can be programmed using a web interface on any device that can connect to internet. Eg It can be put in your washing machine drum and program to send you an email/text when the drum stops. It can be attached to your door to let you know when the door is opened.

Then there is SmartThings that makes it easy to connect the things in your physical world to the Internet. You can monitor, control, automate, and have fun with them from anywhere - at home, office, or on the go. It's also a platform so that independent developers can make physical things connect to the SmartThings Hub and interact with other Smart end-devices controlled by a smart app on your phone. Eg If i have a smart switch thats connected to my Geyser in the bathroom and a pressure sensor on my bed, both connected to the SmartThings Hub, I can create a rule saying "When the Bed Switch senses a movement and the weight decreases" (I woke up) at around "5 AM Weekdays" "Switch On the Geyser Switch. Or I can program a more simpler "Open Lock" when authenticated by my Phone physically (using NFC). More and more developers are now enabled to develop these Smart End-devices and Apps and submit to the SmartThings marketplace. And the possibilities are endless. I had talked about this in 2009 about a door that can tweet.

Interestingly Android@Home was Google's platform to make everyday things connected but it disappeared without trace. But I think Google is going to put all its energy behind +Project Glass this year.

2013 will hear more products that marry physical and digital.

Year of Re-Imagining!

Everyone's Private Driver.More than technology innovations, there will be real world innovations using technology; and thats what I meant by Re-Imagining. Like how Uber and Ola Cabs re imagined Cab services. How SilverCar re-imagined car rental. There is more scope. May be re imagine Restaurants? Shopping? Travel?

Eric Schmidt’s Commerce Fantasy is not far away

2012-12-17T00:03:00.000+05:30

After I wrote my last post about Google's vision, I remembered Eric Schmidt's commerce fantasy which goes like this...

You’re driving down the street, and somehow your phone knows you need new pants. Roll with me here … The phone somehow realizes there’s a pants store on the left and a pants store on the right and knows that through Google Offers the store on the right has the cheapest pants deal. Your GPS says, “Turn right for your pants.” When you walk in the store, its system understands it’s you and that you need new pants and so the salesperson comes out with your pants, of course. You tap your phone to pay, and boom, pants.

Is this really possible? I think it is and parts of it is really happening now.

My Phone knows what time of the year it is and what’s the weather like. Later based on this it can figure out what I should wear.
It knows where all I go, the kind of shops and restaurants I visit and brands I like (Checkins, search, my exact location mapped to a Place, my posts on Google+)
It knows when I buy something online as it can sniff my confirmation emails. And definitely when I use Google wallet online.
Google doesn't know when I buy things in the offline world as of now. However as the world starts using Google wallet mobile payments this problem will get solved.If this happens it will know when I bought the jeans last and can recommend me to buy one after 6 months based on an offer it has on Google Offers.

Google may be preparing to offer plastic Google Wallet cards as well, which will work with its existing online and mobile payment tool.
My phone can say “Turn right" (Turn by turn navigation) "for your pants.” (Google Now in the future)
The shop keeper would know I'm nearby if Google wallet has a POS companion app (like Square Register) and allows Google Wallet app on my phone to open a tab when I reach the store (like Square Wallet).

There was a news that Latitude will soon be integrated with Google+. Probably a brand page owner will be able to see followers when they are nearby.
Inside the store the phone can tell me where the jeans is kept. (Google Maps has indoor maps and Street view like Business photos)
You tap the phone to pay using Google wallet or probably do an hands free auto pay (Future. Like Square Wallet does today. It’s almost definite that Square will be picked by Apple and Google will have to give an answer.)
And all this even without my phone but using Glasses in the later future.

How to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful?

2012-12-04T22:57:00.000+05:30

The new company I work for has a week long induction program. It was some time well spent by the company to make the new employees understand the company well and overall make us comfortable. During the period we also got to meet some interesting people who came to talk to us about different things. One of the talks was about the company's vision and it's strategy to stick to the vision.

Also discussed was how important was for the vision to be inside-out so that it never goes irrelevant. Some examples were shared like how Xerox's outside-in vision was to be "The Document Company" and how "Documents" became irrelevant. Also how Apple's inside-out vision "Challenge the Status Quo" has always stayed relevant and made them successful. As a fan of all things Google, I was thinking about Google's vision and how whatever they do becomes a part of a bigger picture they are painting.

A mission statement focuses on a company’s present state while a Vision statement focuses on a company’s future. I'm guessing Google's vision for all obvious reasons is to be the "Biggest Internet company". Google's mission statement is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful". In simple terms I think the mission is the way to reach the vision. As part of the mission, here are the things they did year on year to become the biggest internet company. Its not a secret but I'm just trying to put the puzzle together.

Search and you will find

Perhaps the internet wouldn't have been organized ever if Google Search Engine didn't happen. I remember the time when the entire web world worked towards making their sites search engine friendly, by creating semantic content to be meaningful when read by a robot. This lead to innovations in the markup language (xhtml) which would help web authors create meaningful content. This movement also led to the improvements in the internet technology, HTML5 as we know it today.

Recognize Faces

If text can be organized, can pictures be left out? Semantic web pages enabled Google to associate information to the images in the web. I remember Google Images had a small game then which me and my friend enter keywords against an image shown to us. If both of us entered the same word which described an image it would give us points. I would say that was one of the earliest Gamification strategies employed which made users do some work for google. Once Google grew confident of the image content, they would have created a program to learn the association and then auto recognize images. A better version of this is what we are using today to tag people on Google+ pictures which has made Google recognize people's faces.

Make Money

The next thing they did was to lay the foundation to their monetization policy. Google makes money out of advertising and they made an ad engine. Ad Words allows advertisers to create and publish advertisement to the inventory and Ad Sense allows content publishers to place ads on their pages. As the information became more and more organized, the relevance of the ads on the pages improved. This made people see/click on those ads and in return made Google and its publishing partners make money. This encouraged regular people to create content on web.

Create Content

More content means more information that can be made use of. Google gave us Blogger and Drive to create, store and publish more content. More content means more people getting onto internet for information. More usage means more content.

They made Gmail with unlimited space so that people create more content and also use more of internet. Google started showing ads based on the content in the email which meant they knew how to make sense of my email and also make it useful. Google Search can now give me search results and alerts based on the emails I receive on Gmail.

Where are you is a thing of the past

World’s information is incomplete without the real world things. Google Maps organized the real world’s data by geo tagging them and made it useful for us. So useful that it gave us the amazing Street view and Turn by Turn navigation. It makes you so aware of the place you are in and you intend to go. Google maps is also getting building/store interiors mapped and photographed.

As usual Google also gave us the Map Maker for us to contribute geo tagged locations to enhance the amazing experience.

More than Broadcast Yourself

I'm sure YouTube is far more than just a user generated video sharing service. Its definitely the place where Google learns the "happenings" in the videos. Also a great place to develop speech recognition and organize spoken content. Speech recognition has now gone "useful" in Google Now and I think the lessons Google learnt from going through all those videos will come alive in Project Glass. Most probably its an integral part of the Google Car.

Chrome

If Google is set to own the internet how can they let users be restricted by browsers. Chrome upped the ante in the browser game with amazing speed, safety, multi device sync, extensions and cloud print. Chrome has become the only program I use to do things on my home computer now which is precisely the premise of Chrome OS.

Mobile - More context to the content.

If Google expects crowd sourcing of all the data for them to organize and made useful to the mankind, would they leave the crowd to rely on a desktop computer to make that happen? Whats with all that data and usage when they are away from the desktop?

By making me own Android devices, Google would

Locate me and everything I do on the devices. Google now knows a lot about me right from at what time i get up to the time i go to work and come back, where all i go, my frequent places, the kind of shops and restaurants i visit, what flights i take and when. It also know who and where my friends are.
It crowd sources Real time Traffic Information
It can now crowd source Street View using the Photo Sphere feature in Android in countries like India where the Google street vehicles are not allowed to ply on the roads.
be my voice communicator and source some amazing voice data
and Of course increase internet usage

The Car

It was easy for me to understand why Google made a self driving car. People don't use internet when driving. So why not make a self driving car so that they can use internet? Google has enough data sourced and organized for this to work.

The vision is coming true!

So what if there is a time when people actually don't use a desktop, tablet or phone to use internet? Project Glass will take care of those moments. Project Glass would be the culmination of all things said above. Its exactly the Vision (pun intended) coming true.

Native is good. HTML5 as well.

2012-09-20T20:43:00.000+05:30

Readers of Whitespace may already know that I'm a big fan of web and HTML5 but that doesn't mean I don't like native apps. I believe that they will co exist for different reasons as it is today. I chose to talk about this now because of the recent admission of Mark Zuckerberg that they made a mistake of betting too much On HTML5, and the Facebook iOS app going native and the news that a pure native Android app is in the works. I've read comments on discussions on this topic where people saying native is the way to go and not HTML5. Personally I'm not able to agree to Mark Zuckerberg's comment fully. I think HTML5 is not to be blamed for the problems Facebook's apps had rather its the choice of the technology they made to make a native app which has to be blamed. I'll try to explain...

Whats the difference between Native and Web Apps?

A native app has all the code and assets for the UI and its Behavior and may be a bit of Business Logic built within the app, the client, that you install in your phone which can then work offline. The only reason the app uses the internet is to get the dynamic data that would populate the UI. So the data is light and doesn't use much bandwidth to get it and its faster. The advantage is that the app is super fast and buttery smooth in UI behaviors. And yes, there are some device features only a native app can access but its a matter of time. The disadvantages are that every time a change has to be done in the UI, a new app version has to be built, submitted to the app stores and hope that the user will upgrade to the new version. The developer may also have to support different versions of the app.

Whereas in a web app the entire code resides in the remote server and the browser, the client, uses the internet to get the instructions for both building the UI and populating data. This is heavier and will work best only on high speed internet connections. Also the browsers have limited memory and will have to architect the app keeping this in mind. But the advantage is the full control over code, that can be changed/tweaked/fixed anytime without dependencies and can be made sure that all the users use the latest version.

Native vs Web App is not a new debate. It existed during the initial times of desktop and internet too. Here is an excellent article to read more on the merits and demerits of native and HTML5 by Eric Sink.

Now the dilemma and the mistakes

My common sense has still not understood why would anyone decide to build a native application using HTML5. For whatever reasons if you have decided to build a native application why think of building it using web technology? You want to control the UI from the server? Then for God's sake you have to be on the web and not native. Its a trade off and a bold product decision you have to take based on what you want to do and the merits and demerits. Native applications do have the facility to embed some web code in their screens but that doesn't mean you can abuse it to make a full fledged screen based on it. A web page will work best on a browser and not on an embedded browser inside an app. A browser has a lot of features that will enhance the performance of javascript and other factors on a web page which may not be fully available for an embedded light browser. Also the internet connections on mobile are not as good as desktop. Now you know what was the mistake Facebook did with its apps.

HTML5 and Native will coexist

Not to have a web app and an exact clone as an app. Then what should be the strategy? Here is what I think...

1. If you are a well established service on desktop web, then web/HTML5 is the way for you on mobile too.

Your users will definitely expect you to have a mobile optimized site even if you have an app for whatever reasons. Isn't it better to focus on just one product and do it well? A friend of mine who works for a successful online company with a great product on mobile web, recently launched an app. I have used the app and its a great experience but other than that I really don't see the point why they need an app. Their mobile web app works like a charm anyway. He says that his customers asked for it, for reasons he has no idea of, so they decided to build an app. Well as a product company you should know where to draw the line. Some people argue about their app's visibility. Believe me if your product is popular among your users they will come to you.

I have no idea why successful web services like Amazon and Cleartrip need native apps.

The only exception here is Windows Phone 7. Their browser support for HTML5 sucks and so a native app would be a good idea or wait for Windows 8.

2. Go native, if you are on web but have some features/experiences that will need some native mobile goodness. Eg Facebook Chat app. It needs to run in the background and should make use of the push technology to deliver messages in real time. More: Foursquare, Google Maps, Saavn, Google Music.

3. If you are only on mobile and not on web, then go native. eg Instagram, Google Goggles, Latitude, Path, Flipboard, various games.

What happened/will happen to hybrid apps?

I would like to abolish hybrid as a buzz word and a major strategy to make apps. However as a developer I don't mind using some HTML/web page here and there for reuse of code in the app to present some static/semi static content that's same as the mobile web version. Eg BBC mobile app. Their article page is html. However BBC as a service fails to be a candidate for native app as per my earlier logic.

A true Online Banking Experience, in the Indian context

2012-08-18T16:49:00.000+05:30

I think banks in India started offering online banking towards the end of 90's, at least as far as I know; I got my first ICICI account then. I was so thrilled that those days I used to login to my account almost every day just to look at my bank balance and logout. It was also the first time I got an ATM card which made my money withdrawal branch visits negligible. It was a great experience compared to the SBI and Canara bank experiences I had till then. But even after 10 years Indian online banking hasn’t changed much considering the changes the World Wide Web has undergone over the last decade.

Even now most of the Indian online banking services are restricted to checking account balance, money transfers, bill payment and address change requests. This is not bad at all but I think a lot more can be done to make it a true online experience.

Account Opening

Account opening is still an offline process in most cases. Why not have an account opening/registration page like any other login based website? I know opening a bank account is an involved process of having an introducer, submitting "Know Your Customer" (KYC) documents etc.

Let’s start with the need of the introducer first. The bank gets a first level of trust if their existing customer recommends a new applicant. So may be as the first step towards registration the applicant should have an invite code from any of their existing customer.

So how will I find out if any of my friends have an account with this bank? I should be able to connect my Facebook account with the bank's site which shows my friends who are already with them. It should also allow me to request for an invite code. My friend will receive a notification when s/he login to his/er account or on email, enters my email into the invite box and invites me. I will then receive an email from the bank which has the invite code using which I can now start filling the registration form online. I would say this is more effective and trustworthy than the current process of getting random people to introduce me.

Btw ICICI's take on marrying social media is to bring out a Facebook app for account access. WTF.

Now to the KYC documents. Of course I will upload the scanned copies of all the documents as part of the registration process. But how will the bank make sure they are genuine? May be the bank can give me the flexibility to set up an appointment with the nearest branch manager to show him the originals to get verified. Or a bank with lesser branches can send someone to me and get things verified. However the bank account shouldn't wait for this to happen. It should start functioning on an unverified mode with the "first level of trust" but for a fixed time period and probably restrict some features like money transfer, cheque book till I complete this.

That said, why does a bank need the KYC documents? KYC documents mostly consists of a photo ID proof, Address proof and PAN card to bring in the second level of trust. The photo ID must be to prove that I exist :P am law abiding. I really don't understand how an address proof will help a bank in anyway. However in India a letter from my bank is accepted as a valid address proof by utility service providers like Mobile phone companies. Again it’s a chicken and egg problem. I have experienced this myself. PAN card is obviously to capture my income tax account number. I agree that a second level of trust is required for the banks, but there should be a better way to do this. But more on that later.

Money Bags

I usually use my online banking account for balance checking, money transfers and utility/credit card bill payment and they seem to do it well even though a good amount of UX enhancement could go into the user interfaces. I'm happy if my account has just the 3 things listed above and some other useful things rather than the junk of features they show now.

Money Bags is an idea my cousin Nikhil thought of. He wanted an easy way to organize his money into bags/folders in order to manage his money better. So let’s say I want to keep away some money to buy a gift for my wife. I can move some money to a bag every month so that it doesn't show up in my regular liquid cash balance. Once my bag is full/achieved target I can use the money to buy the gift. Like that I can have multiple bags for different needs. It’s a simple digital Piggy bank concept. My current bank allows me to create a fixed deposit for this purpose, for which I have to set duration, think of an interest rate and type of calculation and all the works. The Money bag concept takes away all this complexities. The bank policies have nothing much to do with this. It’s just a layer at the online account level for better user experience.

Unify

I have always wondered why I had to re-enter applications, give bank statements and submit KYC documents for credit cards issued by the bank I have an account with. Why can’t I have the ability to apply for a credit card online once I have an account opened? The bank has all the information about me and also decide on the credit limits based on my bank balance and credit rating. They could probably also allow me to club my credit card and debit card points. The same goes for loans.

Address Proof Docs and Home Loan Statement

Easy way of printing these documents for proof submissions to utility services and Income Tax submissions. Also allow easy document submissions as and when its available. I don't know about others, my Home Loan provider, Federal Bank, doesn't allow me to do this. I have to mail the manager and also follow up by calls to get the statement.

Mobile Banking

I have the Citibank mobile application installed on my phone but I never use it. Most of the times I login to my bank account on desktop. So I'm thinking of more realistic use cases for mobile banking.

I know that in the US you can take a picture of a cheque on your phone and deposit it online. Don't know if technically that's possible in India but why not? After all America lays the path in technical advancements.
Check-in to a branch so that you can let them know you have arrived and get automatically queued up for appointments
Allow me to make direct debit payments online and in-store

Help

Most of the times if I need some help I contact them using the messaging feature behind the secure login. I'm pretty sure that a lot of questions get repeated here coz of this. The bank can actually run a public Help forum or a User Voice like forum to share the information to all. This can also be used as a place for people to ask for more features etc. and gauge how many people are asking for it, people can vote up questions and answers to make them popular. They can then think of broadcasting the popular queries on Twitter. Also accept queries on Twitter and create a forum entry themselves. Not that the messaging feature is not needed. I'll still use it for secure information.

Single Point Verification

So earlier we talked about submitting KYC documents for banks to make sure that I'm a genuine and law abiding customer. But this gets repeated all the time. eg If I have to open an account in another bank all these documents have to be submitted again. How can we make this better?

Have a single point independent verification provider with whom I will get myself verified with all my documents and other information. I will update this service on a regular basis. Banks can use this service to get customer information authenticated. Banks are not alien to this idea. They do this with CRISIL to get my credit rating validated before giving me a credit card or a loan. Why not CRISIL take this up? ie I contact CRISIL to get myself verified independently and then I let the bank know about it by a CRISIL OAuth during registration. How is it?

Btw Adhar is for this purpose but I don't know when it’s going to be effective. Also no one really knows about its potential benefits. I will talk more on the problems of Adhar in another post.

Can you think of anything unique in the Indian context that can be achieved by the right use of internet? If you have used foreign banks’ online services which feature of their can we adopt to make life easier?

Widen your perspective!

2012-07-15T12:51:00.000+05:30

Recently I attended a talk by Prabhu Kannan at the 3rd edition of Sapient Nitro Idea Engineers Exchange Conference, on how a technologist (read developer) should widen his/her perspective to see things beyond code. He was making a point that technology is taking over the world in all aspects and as people who contribute to this revolution, technologists should be more than just coders and should be aware of things beyond their expertise. He was trying to say that there should also be a bit of strategist and designer in them as its going to be a team work to conceptualize technical solutions and not just "write mindless code" without even bothered about the outcome of it. The examples he took to say that technology is taking over the world were Amazon being the largest supermarket, Apple being the biggest music retailer, Netflix being the biggest video rental store and so on. This was interesting for me as this was the same question I asked Todd Cherkasky, at the 2nd edition of the same event, after he showed some of the awesome work Sapient Nitro has done. I wanted to know how designers work in Sapient as it was impossible to design solutions he showed without a good team work of designers and engineers.

Prabhu was talking from the perspective of an engineer but I can completely relate to this. Even I believe user experience designers working in technology solutions should be more than "just creative people". For the same reason that they are solving user needs and problems using technology, they should have a good understanding about technology; how things work, basic concepts of programming, front end engineering for sure, insight into the specific industry they work in, the different media (desktop, mobile, tv, internet) through which their solution will be consumed, up to date on the latest happenings in this space and future. They should be equally passionate about the latest Android/iOS/Windows SDK release and its possibilities as much as an engineer. And this doesn't mean you should start learning back end coding. The more you widen your perspective the better you get in designing better solutions. The more products you use the more ideas you get. The more screens you look at the more inspired you become. Recently I interviewed an NID product who told me that they are taught to not think or know anything about technology and only concentrate on creativity. I don't understand how that's possible.

I'm a designer but...

I'm also an ardent fan of internet. I just try out possibly every new product on internet, i will create use cases i can relate to and part of my daily life and then try to use the products not just as a way of 5 minutes research but also as a real user. Once I start using them regularly I get addicted to it, start exploring more and grow with their evolution. I even look at competitor products and see how they have done things differently. I'm a regular user of almost all Google products including Google+, Cleartrip, Yahoo, Flickr, Amazon, Flipkart, Facebook and Twitter, to name a few.

I'm an Android fan and its intent based architecture and tries to get my hands on the latest version but also uses iOS. I use my phone for almost all the cool things you can think of.

I use a Mac at work and Windows machine at home. I know their clear difference. Next i want to really try out the Chrome OS.

I use Chrome, Safari, Firefox and IE. I'm a Chrome fan though.

I buy online a lot. Its helps me to of course buy things effortlessly but also experience the buying and checkout process myself. This includes buying stuff from Amazon or Flipkart to buying flight/train tickets. I recently asked a designer, who was assigned to design an effortless checkout process on phone, about the best checkout experience she has experienced. The answer was she had never bought anything online yet. This for me is unacceptable.

I do online banking. Right from the year 2000. I pay my bills online. I recently paid using Square. Next is Google Wallet.

I read a lot, mainly online. Some people go hiking on weekends but I read about technology, design, humor, photography, food, travel on Google Reader. I also buy e-books and read them on my Kindle app on phone and soon on a tablet (I don't have a Kindle device yet). And yes I blog. I use Blogger for Whitespace and Wordpress for Non Breaking Space.

Cloud is my storage space. My books are in Kindle, reading subscription is on google reader, music on Google Music, Videos on You Tube, my TV can connect to the internet so i watch You tube videos there, files are on Google Drive, pictures are on Google Photos, all my settings of my phone is saved and synced with Google servers. And this is why I'm so kicked about Nexus Q.

I know the basic concepts of programming. I have learnt programming long back but being in close touch with awesome programmers right from my first job has helped me a lot. I don't code though.

Last but not the least, I attend tech/design conferences and un-conferences. Not the one your company sends you to attend. Events where you can meet passionate people who have taken their time out on a weekend to widen their perspective.

10 trends for Mobile User Experience

2012-07-02T09:06:00.001+05:30

Recently at work there was a call to put together our thoughts on what we see as the top 10 trends for mobile user experience. These could be specific to our area of expertise (UI, visual design, UX, communication, instructional design etc.), and should address user needs, behaviors, device features/technology that supports it, mobile patterns as well as visual treatment and design approaches gaining traction or coming up on the horizon. This is what I came up with.

1. Go Up is back

The pagination concept is going away from web. Lazy loading of content as you scroll down makes the page too long that the user will have to scroll back a lot to go up. On iOS quick scroll is restricted unlike Android. However on iOS the user can tap on the status bar to go up but its not obvious. As clicking on logo will take the user to the home there has to be some way which will take the user to the top quickly. On Google+ when the user clicks on anywhere on the header the page scrolls up with a quick animation. Its a treat to watch but its again not intuitive. Variations of this is now becoming a pattern. The Verge scrolls down but shows a small logo floating on the top right side clicking on which the user is taken to top. On Twitter clicking on home link will not reload the page when the user is on the home page. It takes the user to top and load the new tweets. I have seen a lot of people tweeting asking for similar features on FB.

PS: on FB if you want to quickly get to top press the Home button on the keyboard.

2. Floating Header

For the same reasons told above (long pages) floating header with nav buttons and probably a get to top feature is becoming a pattern on mobile web. Floating UI elements were not straight forward to implement till iOS5. It needed a javascript framework called iScroll. But from iOS5 safari started supporting positiong:fixes style which made it easy to implement this. However if not implemented well this may take some prime screen real estate. Hidden navigation is one way to do it. Another pattern hides part of the header but floats a small part of it. eg Gmail mobile web header. The main navigation is not hidden on header but it scrolls out keeping a thin part floating. Google is also doing it on web.

3. Frequent Actions in the Bottom of the screen

As mobile screen sizes grow it will become difficult for the user to reach the top of the screen with his thumb for frequent actions. iOS has got a bottom menu bar/toolbar but they have the back and other frequent actions on top. Android has back on the bottom but removed the options button and put it on top. Not helping. I'm foreseeing that there will be more and more designers realizing this and bringing frequent actions below while keeping navigation on top. The Path Add button and burst out menu is just a start.

4. Hidden left side bar menu

Facebook introduced it as a strategy to make their interface responsive. Their interface has columns hiding or appearing based on screen size. Its now becoming a UI design pattern as its a good way to hide a lot of menu items from the main screen real estate. The others who joined the bandwagon are Path for iPhone, Sparrow Mail, Google+ on Android, Google Search and many more.

5. Desktop and Mobile web design merge

More and more desktop websites will become tablet friendly not only for the ease of maintenance but also to make it more user friendly; Clean and uncluttered interface, effective navigation, contextual actions, high resolution pictures, touch friendly buttons and links etc. eg look at Airbnb.

Its Post PC (aka mobile) era and going forward PCs will be looked at as today's legacy phones. Yes people will be able to able to use tablets for regular use and of course while travelling. Look at the new Microsoft Surface Tablet, there was similar concept from Motorola too on their Android tablet.

6. Design a web thats adaptive to Devices with all kinds of sizes

There is going to be devices of all kinds of screen sizes in the coming days and content producers wouldnt want any device to get left out. Point 5 above will in turn make the page structures lighter which will make it responsive design friendly. Location based services will not only limit to phones. Responsive or No, this means more and more people will make just one site that will work on all devices. This will make it easier for content companies to maintain content but also make ALL of them accessible everywhere for users in all its goodness. A good article on this Why we shouldnt make separate mobile websites/. Also read the comments; there are also people who dont agree to this.

7. Web and Native will coexist.

HTML5 and Native will coexist for specific use cases. More on that later.

8. iOS UI elements will take over web

Its already widely used on mobile web apps. Based on the assumptions 5 and 6, more and more iOS UI elements (like it or not they are more defined and widely used) will be used in sites on other devices too. Look at saavn's upcoming new UI http://new.saavn.com/s/#!/new and see the UI elements/style. Also resize the browser to see how it becomes tablet friendly.

9. Retina Display Everywhere

High resolution pictures (read heavy) to get on all devices to support retina displays. The way image assets are made for internet is going to change for ever. Internet is going to have heavy websites. Web design is going to have No to Very less images/icons and absolute usage of CSS3. See how the iOS back button can be done using pure CSS.

More and big pictures will remain as they show up brilliant on retina displays.

10. Something new

There is something new happening everyday in this space. Patterns created and followed. We dont have to be people who always follow patterns. Its a good time to invent new. Go ahead and break the rules.

Indigo says No, and I like it!

2012-04-16T00:34:00.000+05:30

Kingfisher Airlines going bust and the general brouhaha of Indian airline industry running in losses made me think, and also the fact that Indigo is the only airline that's profitable. I had previously written about Indigo and their ability to talk and how I am a fan of theirs. Somehow I was not surprised that they were the only one profitable, I always thought that they were doing something right.

I decided to watch them closely to know the reasons behind this and my findings were very interesting. They say No at the right places but not at the expense of the overall user experience. Below are my little fundas of things they are doing right.

1. They said No to aerobridge

Using aerobridge at the airports is an extra expense to the airline. But using step ladder also adds extra effort to the airline eg more people to support wheel chair bound passengers. Coaches to ferry passengers from the terminal to the aircraft, but no airline can completely say no to it as there are instances when the aerobridge wont be available for use. And of course the not so great user experience.

The ramp you see here is their answer to an aerobridge. This would make the boarding process a little different for the user. They place one crew member at the start of the ramp and one at the turn. Its conversational. And yes they dont need extra people to support wheel chair bound passengers.

2. They said No to in-flight magazine

However they have a very interesting in-flight catalog of things they sell. Its like a magazine in itself. Its also their showcase of talent, mouthpiece to brag and take digs at competitors and yes to make money too. Sample the below shots.

My personal favorite is their Eat Spice, Drink Beer and Fly Indigo T Shirt ;-)

3. They said No to warm food

Warm food means more energy, aluminium foil packing etc. However their menu made it so irresistible to order. I ordered for a samosa and the miss Indigo said "We do serve samosa but its not warm. Is that Ok?" I showed a face but she smiled. I said fine.

She got the Samosa in an interesting packaging which made me smile.

4. They said No to water bottle

More weight to carry and unnecessary expense if given to people who really dont need water. They serve water from a jug to a paper cup.

5. They said No to Frequent Flying Program

The costs attached to run this program is eliminated which would help them to have the ticket prices low. Also no exclusive check in counters and no red (or blue) carpets; all the passengers are same for them. Also they don't have to deal with the whims and fancies of the "rich show off" members. I know as I have friends working in the airline industry.

6. They said No to different aircraft models

All their aircrafts are of the same make and model. So no different types of pilots, engineering expertise, training programs etc. Also brand new aircrafts that will bring down maintenance costs.

7. They said NO to delays, ahem in a clever way

Now this is debatable but I dont find a problem with it. The flying duration of Indigo flights are communicated as little more than other airlines coz it includes the slight delay that occur due to traffic congestion or something beyond their control. This is smart as it allows them to be percieved as on time and no one seems to be complaining. Eg Do a search from BLR to BOM on any travel site and look at the flying duration of Indigo flights.

Will I ever stop going out for shopping?

2012-03-10T18:00:00.003+05:30

The Tesco South Korea virtual store is one story that excited me some time back. The technology was simple and not new but the right usage of it made it so big hit that I'm guessing it would kill the brick and mortar super markets in South Korea. Apparently grocery shopping is something South Koreans don't enjoy at all.

Brick and Mortar stores failing infront of online stores is not far away. The closing down of Borders, the second-largest U.S. bookstore chain is just the start. Why do you have to go to a book store and browse through the books and then buy when you can get them on Amazon sitting at home and that too for a cheaper price. Hell, soon digital books are going to kill the real books too. I have already moved to kindle edition books and going forward the world also will. If not they will be forced to move as the digital book stores will take over the world.

Recently over a beer Ram, Aditya and Me were discussing about the grand visions of companies like Google, Apple and Amazon and how slowly they worked towards realizing them. If Amazon's vision (no brainer) is to make everyone in this world buy things only from them, then that would be the death of the brick and mortar stores and high streets as we see know it today. But how much of a possibility is that? We debated. Will I stop going for shopping?

There is a remote possibility of that happening. If I see the history a lot of things that I used to do in the real world before has gone digital and virtual. A lot of industries have got disrupted and destroyed because of the digital revolution. Music is just one example of that in my generation. I have seen it evolving from cassettes to Real Player to MP3s to iPods to Google Play and to recently Flipkart. I know that music as we knew 20 years ago doesn't exist any more. Hip and happening air conditioned audio and video parlours dont exist today. We no more go out of rent videos or buy cassettes and CDs. Why cant this happen to shopping?

I was an early adopter of e commerce. My first purchase from an online store was in 2001 from Fabmart.com. Was a cassette. I used to buy books and CDs from Indiatimes.com. Ordered and sent flowers online to my wife (before marriage of course. I buy kindle books. Not to mention the online train and flight tickets. But I always thought that there were some things online stores wont help me with. But Aditya was questioning me and that made me think.

I recently bought an iPod online coz there was no need for me to go to a store, check the features out and touch and feel it before I buy. I knew an iPod inside out. So is that the breaking point? But I love going to malls and super markets. But is that right for everyone else? In Indian cities this might be valid as there is nothing much for people to do in the weekends other than hopping malls, restaurants and cinemas. We are not workaholics like South Koreans. People in America have a lot more to do and visit than mall hopping. I'm not saying they dont go out for shopping but a recent survey done with our friends in the US said that they thought the best way to shop was to do it online. So what are the chances that I'll also go online shopping full on...

Electronics
Definitely. If I know the exact model number i will order it online. I'll get it cheaper too. Anyway i dont get to own the demo piece i touch and feel at the store. I may actually scout around for something at the stores and then buy it online.

Grocery
As of now in India there are some stuff that are non branded (daal, chaaval) which i would like to buy in person. Moreover i like my supermarket visits. But i think the day is not far.

Vegetables
No, coz i have to make sure I'm buying fresh ones. But its again an Indian thing. I need not worry about this in America.

Food
I do order food at home on phone, havent done online yet, but nothings stopping me. But I think the eat out option will remain as dining is much more than a chore.

Jewellery
Well ahem, I have once bought jewellery online. It was a gift to my then girl friend. But when the ring came the size was wrong and I had a harrowing time in returning it and getting my money back. I haven't bought jewellery much even otherwise, so i don't know.

Clothes
I would like to try it before I buy, so may be not. Also if clothes shopping goes online my wife will go into depression. I have seen these concepts where people try out clothes on a monitor etc. May be it will happen. Btw there is something I buy without trying out; underwear.

Perfume
Again I would like to test the fragrance before I buy. However just now my wife asked me to buy this particular perfume online. I was surprised and asked her how she can buy perfumes online. She replied saying she is well aware of it's fragrance.

Shoes
Again a No from me. But recently I was talking to the designer of Myntra.com and he told me that his site gets a lot of orders from tier 2 towns in India. The fact is there are lot of rich people in these towns but they dont have the high end brand stores there. So they are forced to order it online. Very interesting. Btw Myntra.com is a very well designed site.

Sun Glasses/Frames
No, coz I have to be sure by wearing them before I buy. But again i think its a matter of time. Warby Parker, a new optical frames and sunglasses brand in the US is trying to make this happen. Not only they are trying to make frames cheaper by optmizing a lot of logistics at their end but also by making it available online. They have this 'Home Try On program' where a user can get a maximum of 5 frames delivered at home and have 5 days to return the ones he is not buying. You should check out their site. Pretty well designed.

Furniture and Other curios
Yes I will. We dont have much of these sites in India. But again in America there is Fab.com

OK that's it from my side. What do you think?

PS: Btw its interesting to know that brick and mortar stores are using mobile internet/technology to fight against the competition from desktop online stores. Most of their solutions are to bring customers to their store when on the move. But that's for another day.

Trends, mobile will enable in 2012

2012-01-22T14:13:00.000+05:30

Mobile Payments and Allied activities

Yes this has been a prediction every year and nothing substantial has happened till Square and Google Wallet got introduced. Its expected that the new Android devices will bring NFC devices to millions of users in 2012. Businesses will start pushing offers, coupons and recommendations electronically on mobile phones over the air using internet, NFC tags and QR code. Payments will be the next obvious thing they will do with their phones after redeeming the offer at the Point of Sale. Mass transit companies will also use NFC for ticket purchase, storage and validation. Mobile Payments will be enabled and driven by

Google: Google checkout is now Google Wallet. All of google's payment services will be focussed on mobile now. Already deployed at their partner stores across US. They are working with Credit card companies and Public transit companies for partnerships; NJ transit to start with.
Square: Biggest adoption seen till now. Mastercard's strategic investment. Their technology doesn't have dependencies other than internet connection. Most definitely Apple will acquire them
Paypal: Already started out trials in Home Depot stores for mobile and Paypal credit card payments

Mobile payments will not become a norm in 2012 but users will start warming up to the mobile payment/redemption use cases.

Serendipity

The mobile device enabling you to encounter things as a pleasant surprise. Almost all the contenders are right now in the data collection stage to find out people's likes and dislikes and what all they do. Location based services will drive this as they go on a recommendation mode making way for mobile phones to be the best companion.

Square: The Card case app has an explore feature recommending places. It alerts store keeper about your presence who in turn will call you by name, get your regular drink fixed, pushes rewards, offers etc.
Foursquare: Gradually going away from the checkin model to a recommendation service as they have already collected enough information from the checkins. Radar on phones and the new Redesiged explore feature on web is a start.
Google Places: Currently in data collection mode using Google plus checkins, Location history, Schemer and Google map maker. They are trying to acquire Pinterest (At the time of writing this).
Facebook: Knows about you quite a bit. Bought Gowalla who was on the path of becoming a travel companion.
Kevin Rose's Oink: You rate things and not places. Has good potential for Google acquisition.

Big Screens

Phones will get bigger screens. More Phablets will come to the market. Single hand operations will become more difficult, but no one is likely to complain. Mobile phone application navigation patterns will change to anchor more towards the bottom of the screen. OS providers will be forced to get their voice action capabilities right as typing and tapping becomes a two hands activity. Trousers will get bigger pockets. An entire ecosystem will be introduced to handle the user problems the bigger screens create.

Voice Actions

Voice will find more adoption on mobile but not as a virtual assistant. The curiosity Siri created will make users want more of voice interaction with their phones. This will be rekindled coz of the bigger device screens. More and more devices, mobile and non mobile, will start supporting voice. Google will come with a better version of their voice actions and will integrate to all their devices including tv. Siri will come out of beta. Nuance, who powers Siri has already announced Dragon TV a voice control platform for all TV makers. Kinect as a platform will be used in more use cases like retail. Cars will get integrated voice Actions to control media. Voice will be primarily used in relaxed use cases like to control media/games which will improve adoption which will pave for more adoption in the future.

Less, But Better

2011-12-29T18:47:00.001+05:30

I recently noticed that my bathroom floor tiles were getting increasingly dirty day by day. I was not surprised as I clean it only once a month or so, but I quickly realized that its not enough. As usual I started thinking about a possible solution to this like a typical design problem.

I first identified the reasons that stopped me in doing a better job at cleaning

Cleaning the entire bathroom took some time. As I usually enter the bathroom at the last minute I skip the cleaning to another day
I had to dedicate some good amount of prime time for bathroom cleaning on weekends; which I didnt want to do.
I was getting lazy coz of the effort taken for bathroom cleaning. I started procrastinating
As I was forced to do it I was not doing a good job of it
As I was cleaning only once in a month or so and that too a bad job of it, most of the times the bathroom remained dirty. This brought down my spirits

The main issues that bubbled up from the above points were Time, Effort and Quality and that's what I had to crack; and i came up with this solution.

Clean daily but just one part of the bathroom, and do it well

This takes less time and effort and as a result I can do a good job of it. By the time I finish all the parts the first part would have become a bit dirty, so I start again. After the bathroom is considerably clean, then do it on a need basis, ie clean wherever gets dirty. Its also encouraging for me to see the cleanliness so that i'm more enthusiastic to maintain it.

I think I'm on the right track. My bathroom is a whole lot cleaner now.

Product Lessons Learnt

Don't attempt to design and build a product in its entirety on day one. Have the bigger picture in your mind but take the most important/basic feature and build it with the right depth, quality and polish. Add the just enough ancillary features to make the basic stuff look complete. This will also help to channelize the energy of your resources. Once the first set of features are done well, take the next. Once every feature is done with the desired quality, revisit the first feature and continue the cycle. This will make the product live and remain clean.

Less, But Better was the design philosophy of the legendary Dieter Rams