Lots of things in my personal and professional life entice me, sometimes repel me, make me think, inspire me. This blog is just a response to all the stimuli, from the perspective of a designer.
I've been a profound admirer of Sir Ken Robinson, who emphasizes on how schools don't really tap the way children learn, not to mention what they want to learn. He rightly questions the purpose and methods of education school education. Educators need to cater to children's creativity and curiosity. Dr. Sugata Mitra quotes Sir Arthur C. Clarke, "When children show interest, education happens." Dr. Mitra successfully uses technology to his advantage in his pursuit, and proves Sir Clarke's point.
Also, children nowadays are exposed to the idea of competition. Instead, Dr. Mitra's experiment clearly indicates that children learn together, as a team. This inculcates social skills in the children, teaches them teamwork!
Congrulations to Dr. Sugata Mitra for the first $1M TED Prize, and good luck continuing the Hole in the Wall project.
We have been using date range selectors to get reports on the InMobi Interface. Recently, I was asked to design a month selector, so that users can get the transaction history across a few months.
I started off exploring some interaction patterns for selecting a range of months. I first looked at some internet banking applications that I have been using. They just have drop-downs to select the FROM and TO months. Or they give only monthly statements. If you need statements for a range more than one month (ah, they're so difficult to figure out!), there are date selectors, and not month selectors.
Here are the designs that I explored. Note: Pardon the bad experience caused by the funny alignment and sizing of images in blogger.
Drop-Downs Having two sets of drop-downs for the Month & Year, for the FROM & TO months respectively. It may be alright to select just one month of some year (such as your birth-month). But it's obviously a very inefficient way of selecting a month range (8 clicks and lots of scrolling).
Some portals commit the sin of having the years in ascending order in the drop-down, especially for the birth year. Scrolling down from 1900 or 1950 - causes HATRED in users.
We can optimize this a little by merging the month and the year. Though this will take two separate sessions of scrolling. And it will be worst, if it's a small gap of months, that occurred long time ago.
I tried to optimize the design further by getting straight into the context.
The design was for records spanning not longer than 4-7 years. So in the above solutions, the user may not have to scroll at lot.
Disabling months that are not relevant.
If a user has registered for the application in June 2009, then the months before June 2009 should be disabled.
It's February 2012, so the months thereafter should be disabled.
The years before 2009 and after 2012 will not be visible at all, since there are no selectable months in them.
We should set the default selection to:
FROM: 6 months ago
TO: Current Month
Also, the design should be agnostic to the order of the months. If the FROM month is after TO month, then on click of 'Apply', the values should be instantly swapped.
Double Scroll Taking some inspiration from the pattern for drop-downs in the Apple iPhone, I came up with the following designs for the web platform. What we do here, is just have two scrollable components in the same drop-down.
In the design below, we can have a fixed selection pane, and the month & year scrolls in the background can be moved to make the required selection.
The month selection can be viewed near the 'Apply' button. We can also have the 'Cancel' button preceding the 'Apply' button, the way Apple does it.
Selection Range The user can drag the pins FROM (1) & TO (2), to the months they want to generate the reports for.
As you drag the pins over the points, the month and year should be displayed below it to notify the selection. In this case, default selection can be complete life of the account. Well, the user effort required in such a drag-and-drop of the pins to the required month (twice!) acts as the disadvantage of this design.
Anyway, more optimization is also possible - such as demarcating January of every year.
Meters Meters can be visual panels controlled by the UP ▲ & DOWN ▼ arrows. The component can also be controlled by the keyboard.
The contents text boxes can also be changed using the keyboard. But incorrect values should not be allowed to be entered.
Select the Month, then Year. Here, I'm exploring a design where the selection of the month precedes the selection of the year. Well, that's how we language dictates it - the name of the month, followed by the year.
This would be a bit like the Google Analytics date selector. The FROM field being the default selection. On clicking of the month, the year can be selected (then the year panel closes). Immediately, the TO field will become active and the months will appear like links again.
Select the Year, then Month. In this pattern, we show two selection panels, for FROM & TO. The valid years are displayed first. On selection of the year, the valid months are displayed for selection.
In the following pattern, I'm exploring vertical alignment for the years and months.
And finally... So the design that I suggested was the following. I merged the years together. Users can use arrows to go back and forth with the years. Again, the invalid months can't be selected, and the invalid years can't be viewed (no prev/next arrows accordingly). Default selection is: 6 months ago to current month.
I shouldn't forget to mention this incident. We had a little confusion about which month is exactly 6 months ago - how do we include the current month and the corresponding month 6 months ago? And to resolve the confusion, our Product Manager Sriyansa Dash made a great quote - our user would always prefer more data than less :)
Again, a wonderful TED video. Here, Sir Ken Robinson, in a very interesting talk, decorated with some hilarious quips, describes how schools kill creativity.
Hopefully some day I'll be able to translate P.L.Deshpande's 'Bigri te Matric', because I could totally relate to his words, when I listened to them, and when I watched Sir Ken's video.
Also, have got similar insights from Mr. Jinan Kodapully when I was at NID.
Always heard a lot about Sir Ken, and have enjoyed his RSA Animation video. But the one in this post is simply marvelous. Thanks to Ishan Bhalla for mentioning this on his blog.
Would love to hear any thoughts on education or design education, do comment.
Erik Spiekermann on observing, getting inspired, and designing, of course. Spiekermann gives us a whole lot of great design advice, through his love - Typography.
Something more than just a must-watch video. Get influenced! Get inspired!
2) Alan Cooper: Advocate of interaction design Alice Cooper: American rock singer, songwriter and musician AL COOPER <- Bad Design
3) Dear Corporate Flyers, FLY AWAY FROM HERE >:(
4) The Spirit of Bangalore! It rained!
5) and life is easy...those who think its hard are pessimists
6) @mituj: Are you taking Twitter so seriously?! God, are you American?!
7) Women are more dangerous than men... 2 hour Movies have Villains. A million episodes of a TV soap have VAMPS
8) People in Bangalore...do you hear Ambulance sirens really often nowadays? Something really wrong? Or just something fishy?! How to find out?
9) @mituj: what's this new event on the 9th? Come on Gtalk na...this is painful
10) The better team wins?! False. Chelsea totally controlled Barca...what a shame!
So, (6) and (9) clearly tells you what I thought about twitter in the initial stages. Then I stopped tweeting for sometime. I just started following some people, whose view I wanted to know. Such as Vir Sanghvi and Shashi Tharoor :P
My twitter home was full of relevant and awesome tweets the moment I started following Chris Spooner, Smashing Magazine, & Abduzeedo. Probably, all on the same day. I'm a big fan of these guys, and must say they're responsible for Twitter being one of the first tabs I open in my browser.
I must thank twitter for their Retweet feature. Which they probably started just around the time I started following these guys. I have been getting really awesome tweets ever since, and I have been following really awesome twitter users.
Well, there are social networks like Facebook and Orkut, that are used to connect with "friends". And there are professional networks like Linkedin that help you to connect with relevant professional contacts.
But twitter, for me, is more of an information repository than a social network. I just have to mark some awesome articles as favourites. And hoping that pals from my profession are following me, I just have to RT and they get the links that I found are cool.
Finally, there are a lot of things to learn from the User Experience that twitter provides.
As Jack Dorsey mentions in the above video, they have been redesigning twitter according to what the users have asked for. They have been adapting to the users' habits, and not the other way round, which is exemplary.
I also like the way Twitter displays the tweets, one after the other. Even if there's a reply to a tweet, it doesn't appear in the tree structure, as they show it in most Comments section. Personally I feel, in the case of twitter, linear is cool.
Another thing I find really awesome is their display of "3 New Tweets" without page refresh. Many other portals do this (GMail does), and I think this boosts the user experience a lot. Also, the tab saying: (3) Twitter/Home.
One more thing worth a mention: The Fail Whale. How awesome is that?! Now isn't that a really cool way to show that something's wrong?
Let me end this by saying: I'm not on Facebook; I don't need Facebook. But, I'm glad that I'm on Twitter. Thank you Twitter.
Got this video on twitter. I am absolutely starting to love this social networking site. Shall post about my experiences with twitter soon. (Now that I have resolved to blog regularly about design)
How many products do we have today that don't leave us in an indecisive state?
Even an Apple iPod comes with so many types and colours :)
Well, we designers cater to a vast range of users- coming from different cultures, different genders, different sexes, lefties & righties, etc,. So it's a rare case that products (esp. from big brands) are released without giving the user, the power of personalization.
Well, how important is giving variations of the same products? How bad is it to be decisive?
EXPERIENCE DESIGN with Mr.Shashank Mehta by Chandni Garg, Richa Sharma, and Samir D.Bellare
Area Selected: STAFF ATTENDANCE AREA
fig.1-View of entrance of the office area
fig.2-Computer with RFID System
fig.3-Narrow Passage to enter the campus
The staff comes across with a monotonous routine everyday. So, there is ample scope of enrichment in their experience, especially in the morning (when they enter), and in the evening(when they leave).
Objective: To enrich the experience of the staff, and give them a feeling of uniqueness, in their everyday monotonous routine. The opportunity area we have chosen is the staff-attendance machine interface, where they come to mark their attendance in the mornings and check out in the evenings.
It is a very important area as it marks two important periods of the day for any professional, that is the start and the end of their work life.
Process :
EXPERIENCE
We tried to brainstorm on this particular word. We asked ourselves questions like
'What is Experience?!' ; 'What are the various aspects associated with Experience?' ;
'What reminds me of a good experience?', etc.
We took out all the words we could associate with 'Experience', and then categorized them under various headers.
fig.4- Brainstorming Exercise
After this study we came up with five categories and represented them using the above diagram. The headers under which the points are defined are:
Entertainment – The visual, auditory and mainly emotional aspects of media closely associated with the society.
Feeling – The conscious or unconscious emotions one’s mind generates as a response to every stimulus.
Environment – How one relates to nature and caring about its various aspects, as the repercussions affects oneself.
Connections – Man being a social animal, has some connections and relations with every other entity.
Memories – Experience is closely related with memories as one lives in close accordance to one’s past, which is stored in one’s brain as memories.
fig.5-Final Representation
Design Solution:
So, we came up with this system, wherein the staff, when they mark their attendance every morning, will be greeted by their name and also complimented. This will indeed be a very unique experience for everyone in the staff. It is a vey peculiar experience when anybody is greeted by their name. (for e.g. If you call up some service helpline, and they address you as "Hello Mr.Mehta, how can I help you?" , you get the feeing of a personal touch). And when there is an extra compliment added, such as "Good Morning Susanth; that's a nice shirt you're wearing today!", the experience will be all the more enhanced.
We have recorded the experiences of two subjects who used the system while marking their attendance in the morning. We can see how they were surprised by the new system.
One may say that this system will become boring once the novelty is lost. But there will be a database with greetings and the compliments which will be updated, so that the staff doesn't have a feeling of deja vu. Hence, the experience of the staff will be enhanced by our system as the monotony of the staff member will be broken.
Here, Mrs. S. Shashikala gives us her feedback about the system, after using it.
Touchscreen systems are much-hyped nowadays. PDAs that worked with the stylus, the recent advent of MotoRokrE6 in India, and I'll be a fool to miss out the Apple iPhone. You know what's lined up for you next?! Perhaps you do. For the ones who dont... Microsoft Surface & Multi-Touch OS (by NID students Adithya Ananth & Divesh Jaiswal) along with their NaturalUI.
Hmmmm....after you've visited the sites, I'm sure you must be going 'Wow!'
Indeed its an innovation in user-interfaces. But something makes me think that it has great potential to mess up things. Not accepting the inevitable change (especially when its gotta do with a more natural user interface) is stupid, but obviously I have concerns:
Can the human finger be as precise as the tip of the mouse cursor?
How big or small can the interface be?
What about the ergonomics?
What will be the learning curve? Can the computer-user accept the change?
The UI looks welcoming to the non-tech-savvy people? Is it really?
I'd be editing this particular blog when more such issues come to my mind. I'd like you to comment about what you think could be the issues. And those in favour of the touch-screen are obviously welcome to prove my points wrong.
The advocates of form and those of function have been playing tug-of-war with design for a long time. But now we designers are wisely moving in the direction not letting design limit itself to these two. I think the rise of experiential design is extremely crucial to the purpose of broadening horizons with respect to design.
I can give you the example of my mother. My brother and I are computer engineers. We have tried to convince her that however hard she tries, she cannot possibly make our personal computer irreparable. Yet, she’s afraid of using the computer, especially the internet. My grandmother boasts of using the typewriter. But definitely, she’ll have a hard time getting one-on-one with the PC. People say that the learning ability goes down with age. But my grandma got accustomed to the new LCD screen TV (and its remote control) on the very first day. Plus these are the same people who use the television for number of hours beyond imagination. Don’t they feel they might kill the TV pressing the remote control a million times a day? How long will the computer, the mobile, the mp3 player, the DVD player, and many other digital products take to establish the same comfort level as the TV?
Now, is there any way to get rid of the Guia del Usario? Can the user just look at the product and figure the function all by himself? The form certainly will play a major partnership with function here. Giving the user the sense of familiarity, when he uses the product for the first time. I certainly see a new breed of designers working in this domain and hence making the forever-developing technology accessible and available to more and more people.
Emotions and relationships play a very vital role, especially in the Indian subcontinent, as motivating factors to make the non-tech-savvy accept and apply technology. Senior citizens in India would not want to use the internet or chat, unless they know they can see their new-born grandson in Miami. Similarly, another motivating factor would be money.I would call my best friend staying away say once a week. But I’ll scrap him on orkut or chat with him on Yahoo!Messenger more frequently. For free.
I think as Designers for Digital Experience, we have a very wide scope for connecting with the user and creating something they’ll not only accept, but also love to use, love to experience. I sincerely feel, all the knowledge we’ve gained, ever since we were born plays a big part here. Just scratching our brains a bit and living our life again, in your mind, answers so many questions we face while designing anything. Here I’d like to congratulate my friend, Prabuddha Vyas, who did a wonderful assignment in Digital Design and Society-I.
As designers, how do we tend to look at design? The connection between Design and Business was discussed about a great deal in the CII-NID Leadership through Design Summit 2007 in Bangalore. It was attended by big names in design and business from all over the world. It started with how design helps business and ended with how business helps design.
Some quotes I'd like to mention here, and I request some comments from designers who read the blog. "Design is too important to be left to designers alone" --Jacob Matthew, Idiom.
"Presently, the situation in India is that of 10 designers graduating from a D-school, 6 want to save the planet, 3 get into academics, and 1 starts his own business. I want all the 10 of them to think about business" --Kishore Biyani, Future Group. Is this statement not too business for design?
I thought I knew what design was until I attended the summit. I don't know whether to continue with my perception of what design is, or to listen to what the people at the summit have been asking me to believe. I have a serious problem when people associate design to business, because of one observation.
I have another doubt after attending the summit.
"As Designers, Do we Design and Sell or Just Use Design to Sell? Are Businessmen game or are they just Using 'Design'(the word) to Sell?"
So, you want to know what design is. Its actually up to you. I can tell you what design is....in my opinion. So basically, design can be perceived in different ways by different people. Hence, design is relative. If I explain this to you this way, which obviously sounds boring, you could call it my bad design. But.... don't do it, else I won't tell you what design is....yes, in my opinion of course.
Hmmm...I actually am very bad with abstract nouns. Hence, I can put forth my view better, using examples. Design is generally associated with fashion as we all know. Hence, it is more associated with the aesthetic part of an object. Here, I'd like to mention an example. You have a mobile keypad and a keyboard. Which of the two types faster? The keyboard, right? It's got keys of the perfect size and I don't have to press the same key 4 time to get a 'S'. But which one has more aesthetic value? You could argue, but I'd say the mobile keypad. The shiny surface, backlights, the numbers using the same buttons, then even alphabets of different languages in the same little area, yet it looks so beautiful, doesn't it? So if you see form, the mobile keypad is very beautiful. But if you want the primary function of typing English sentences fast, the keyboard is much better. There has been this fight, I hear, between advocates of form and those of function; it goes back a loooong time. I'd like to stun you a bit, if I may. The mobile keypad and a keyboard example stays. Which of the two do you think, will be better for someone who's just started using one? Searching for a key on the keyboard is a hell more difficult than to search for one on a mobile keypad. Yeah, there are about 101 keys on a keyboard just about 15 on a mobile keypad. Hell, the mobile keypad is called mobile rightly, it is much more mobile than a keyboard. Try slipping a keyboard down your pocket. If you could do that, you surely need a new pair of pants/a new pocket for your shirt, or you desperately need to head to the gym. (In any case, if you really tried slipping a keyboard down your pocket, you need a psychiatrist).
When I was in school, and even your age, I always thought, design started during Renaissance or say, the Industrial Revolution. But it goes much before the sophisticated human. Stone-age man knew the use of fire. You might have learnt that in history, I presume. You might know they used fire, outside their cave, to guard themselves from wild animals. After some thinking, I have to agree, that is great design! Stone-age man knew fire is dangerous and destructive. So did the other animals. Forest fire is really not a thing of only the modern era. So you have fire outside your cave. Not an animal will come closer. Here I say have fire, not light fire, because you don't surely know, whether stone-age man made fire all the time. He could have brought a burning branch from the tree.
Coming back to recent times, design is associated with a product. A tap, its a nice design. Regulating the water flow, with the size of the faucet staying the same. Pretty neat, isn't it? So you can talk about all products, they seem to be a simple thing to you. But they were a revolution when they were invented. The light bulb turned a Tommy into a Sir Thomas Alva Edison. On a more serious note, he was a great inventor. He tried a number of other ways to make a light bulb. He realised the need for a domestic light bulb. And that is the first step in designing. Realising the need. And devoting yourself to finding the answer.
It doesn't end there though(Design is surely not an easy job, but unarguably the most interesting one). You need to find a solution which takes ethics into consideration too. It should not be polluting the environment...people should survive and live to use it, no? Believe me, the rich can buy most things. Make something even the common man can own and use. And try your best to make it sustainable...atemporary solution is more of a mirage than an oasis. As I mentioned, design is not easy. Nothing is. But nothing is as creative, as brain-scratching, as soothing. As satisfying. [period]
fig.4- Brainstorming Exercise
fig.5-Final Representation
