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I learnt most of my design skills on the Job and by reading design guidelines and methods online. As I walk back the memory lane I remember taking print magazines and then trying to create web layout out of them to hone my skills. Today as a Interaction designer I do less and less of this. But I still hold lot of respect for the magazines that help shape my design thinking.
Magazines today
With the advent of blogging and publishing tools the definition of magazines is fast changing to a …

When was the last time you faced an IVR (Interactive Voice Response Systems) ‘trying to make sense’ of what you want to do. The IVR probably took you through 10 options while you faced a tough task of remembering what number to punch on your number pad to be able to progress in you task. Compared to my love for automation I definitely don’t hold IVRs in highest esteem.

But whatever the customer views might be, the number of IVRs implemented are on increase. I recently typed on Google ‘Surveys on usability of IVR’s’ – I was very surprised by the number of articles discussing about ‘Surveys done post calls using iVR’s’. This just indicates the amount of business ROI benefit this technology offers. Probably at the expense of customers comfort.

The recent trouble at Yahoo has given a lot of ‘food for thought’. Yahoo is one of the most well known names in the cyberspace. Is probably second only to Google, the search engine specialist. Over the years Yahoo seems to be slowly being displaced by other market players, for example Gmail is making a huge dent in email crowd, while Facebook, Myspace are together taking out the Chat room and Yahoo groups, Youtube and others are pulling the entertainment public away from Yahoo radio and entertainment sections. What exactly …

Beyond just being great at what you already do as a User Experience professional lies the periphery skill sets that really contribute to a great professional. These include Presentation skills, Collaboration and knowledge. readon!

I have been suffering from the ‘Lack of Photoshop’ disease since some time now. Being used to the graphic software even to leisurely think has made it very tough for me to redesign the blog myself. I ended up with taking an inspirational theme from Michael Jubels set of themes. This theme provides me with a lot more easily customizability along with focus for users.
I would love to promote this theme and at the same time encourage others to add more to the theme with their creativity in visual …

Have you been lately in the creative binge, when you look at everything and get that crazy revolutionary idea that could change the world. I guess for designers it comes really easy. Anyways what about deciding to think of something different everyday about just one object? 
90mobilesin90days.com is one such great idea from peope in Adaptive Path!. here’s some text from thier blog. Do vist them and also start your own discoveries, you might just turn into the ‘kunfu Panda’ 
“I’m in creative recovery. For the next 90 days, I’m going to …

Design the best way to represent tabular data that has unlimited columns and unlimited rows. I guess you get the idea, we often come across tables that 20 odd columns that can be viewed or edited and that have to fit into the nice little space of a browser and be very usable at that? 
Any Ideas

A quick review of whats so great about Google Chrome and why i have started using it along with ie 7.0 and firefox for personal browsing!

AliBaug - Murud Beach - The idea of returning home was frustrating. I had a marvelous time with buds from office laced with the amazing sands of Marud beach and rich heritage around place.
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Social tagging or Folksonomy possibilities: Social tagging received a lot of attention sometime around the early youtube introduction. Numerous applications were built around the concept - from bookmarking, to movies, books.

The big idea around this - was user’s position as contributors to applications. According to me there is much left to be explored in form of providing new ideas, features and making them accessible to users to make the concept more potent. In this blog i ponder with maps, having found an excellent example of folksonomy at work in wikimapia!!!

I have been part of different discussions about designers being very different from professionals from others. The usual keywords i come across include positive attributes like, ‘talented’ - ‘innovative’ - ‘different’, the negative ones include, ‘arrogant’, ‘moody’ and the like.  
Are designers really different or is the type of work that we do, that gains us the popularity and unpopularity.
Lets start with work:
- A typical designer sits with the pencil more often. Atleast i do, as i try to bring more clarity to what i am doing. I also spend lesser …

Virtual Keyboards: If you use the online banking channel often. Its very likely you have come across many of these. ‘Virtual keyboards’ mimick the activity of actual input keyboards allowing user’s to enter data by clicking on the representative text instead of typing them in. Why should you click on an online representation. While its all easy and simple to do it with real keyboard that you use anyway for everything else. The often quoted reason in Security. ‘Virtual keyboards’ provide better security. In this post i ride throught keyloggers, the need for them and the usual usability perspective.

Here are some amazing links discussing about AGILE - UX intregration. I am looking forward to adding more links as i find them on the web.

Agile Logic - UED Process Integration in Agile Development (PDF)
Agile Modelling
Are Agile Projects Doomed to Half-Baked Design? - Slideshare

Many organizations have structures similar to Agile or extreme programming but really don’t go out in the open accepting it for many reasons. Am likely to write an article how Agile is really the best solution for development in the current scenario with UX …

I had an amazing weekend, capturing night shots of fast moving traffic and a potter who was kind enough to let me click his wares!  To view the pics, please click on the images. These thumbnails managed through the amazing Gallery software plugin for wordpress.
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This is what makes Jobbs job much tougher. User expectations of the already technologically squezzed industry

I had an interesting conversation with a friend on implementation of User Centered Design processes in Agile or Extreme Programming kind of setup. As we brainstormed on our past experiences and the hows to get it right in a Agile specific environment we came up with these arguments.

Aadesh has a wonderful site  and Gallery 2.0 for pics. Now he’s out offering a brilliant theme he built on top of flickr look and feel!
Here’s the link!- Flickr Theme Gallery

Am part of a lovely team in Capgemini Pune. Some are know to be faster than the shutter. Click on the thumbnail below to watch them do just that.    
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Most sites have adopted them. Some are still taking thier time. A few of best practices i have come across and would love them to add to the user’s delight. Whats more on the development side these might not be so big a pain to implement using the javascript/ css combination.

A few days back i began creating my Resume. The result was this blog. I also considered creating an interactive way of displaying my CV! There were numerous things that came to my mind that could provide a keen analysis of experience. I just ended up with a few wizards and the sort. My resume did impress people but i got slowed down in putting all the features.
My visual CV gets it right!

Its Innovative,  
Packs ready to use widgets,  
Provides PDF conversion,
Is visual :)

The drawbacks, i have aleady entered  information five …

I remember a time when one of the client teams requested for a Dashboard with multiple functionality. They had a unique problem. The user was supposed to perform multiple activities on the screen. Some of these included monitoring a constantly changing data grid along with a form input that required input based on the changing grid. The user group also wanted a calendar along to refer to few activities done in the past. And then there was a request for a search.

Global industries are going through a phase of Recession (Link ). Even if we go by conservative estimates the Recession is likely to have adverse impacts on IT spending or innovation in newer products for a while. As large corporations tend to move to smaller budgets to skim through the phase, the impact might introduce cost cutting in Introduction of new products (projections beyond 5 years), maintenance projects with low returns, non-core businesses, introduction of new product/ service features.
How would User Experience perform as a service line,
User Experience has introduced numerous benefits that …

User Interface design is a continuous amalgamation of new ideas that spring from everywhere to help improve usability and interaction design. This body of knowledge constantly moves among the fraternity before it takes shape of a standard. The start is usually evangelization with a site or two trying their luck at convincing others through free scripts. I am a little more than convinced with some of the newly appearing UI widgets. These include carousels, Ajax based widgets to form input mechanisms. Let me begin with the Holy radio button.

Word clouds’ produce an amazing effect when introduced suddenly. You end up with a sudden burst of images in your head trying to make sense of the collation. I have often used such ‘word collages’ as I used to call them, In my design work. Some people claiming word clouds provided some kind of visual feast with skin deep feel of knowledge acquisition. My today’s surf got me on to wordle.net. Wordle.net is a dedicated site for people with the love for word clouds. It lets you punch in a bunch of keywords and you have a random arrangement that you can print or share with others.