Obama visit - random musings

The best, rationaled, well paneled discussions on Obama visit happening on ndtv 24x7. Shekhar Gupta takes the cake on the discussion. His take on Maha Govt's 'baraati' attitude sums up the incompetencies and useless row created by them on being asked to show identity proofs.

Disappointed with BJP's official press briefing showing their disappointment that Obama didn't slam Pakistan. Grow up guys. Yeah Shekhar I agreee with you - they have lost their bearings.

regards,
Lokesh Sapre
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Sent from my Nokia E71

The Curious Case of Buzzing Light

On a long haul international flight, the most boring part besides watching the rerun of movies is standing outside the loo and waiting endlessly for your turn. On a recent trip while I was waiting for my turn, twice or thrice I saw the call attendant light outside the loo blink. Each time the attendant came and asked the person inside if everything was fine, she got a +ve reply and went back. False alarm. It was not as if the call was made by one person. I saw that pattern getting repeated with 3 different people in 2 separate loos. Curiosity took over me as finally my turn came and while the call of the nature happened, I was snooping around to find where the attendant button was. As I accidently spotted the button (yes, I was on the verge of unknowingly pressing it), it dawned upon me why the airhostess was getting called for no reason by person inside the loo. 

Take a look at the picture above. The orange colored button is placed on the left hand side. In the matchbox shaped toilet, as the person sits on the pot, many a times  in that cramped space the person tries to adjust himself in and this is when the button gets accidentally pressed as it’s too close to the arm and tucked away near to the waist level and gets missed completely by the person. It nearly happened with me too as I tried to jostle in the compact loo.

Flawed Product Design  

The above incidence serves as a good example for software & product designers. The intent of placing an emergency call button close to the person is right, but should that be the right position where it needs to be placed? Any call to action features, be it on the web, desktop applications and as my airline loo experience showed me should be placed where it’s visible and convenient for a person to use.  In that loo the button was getting missed and that was the reason it was getting accidentally pressed by people. Perhaps shifting the button a little more to the left could have solved the problem. A) The accidental pressing would have stopped. B) The button would have been more visible and in front of the eye. 

In conclusion, as a designer or a product developer it’s imperative to step into a user’s shoes and iron out these kind of potential usability issues at initial stages of design itself. Getting the product prototype tested by actual users during prototype stage helps in finding problems that are easier and cheaper to fix rather than unearthing it after the product has been released. Involve a usability consultant in the project right from the inception stage as their expertise and usability knowledge can help in shaping up the product as per user expectations and meet defined goals & business objectives.

 

Usability Testing of the Delhi Airport T3

As said by GMR in an interview:

..... airport is about people, not buildings. An airport is a very complex system," he says. That is why before throwing open the Delhi airport to the public he is testing it with "dummy passengers" - 3,000 men and women, each paid Rs 175 to come and play act, testing everything from baggage handling to security.

mobile blogging

Testing out mobile blogging through this 1st scrap posted through my business phone. If it updates instantly then you will see frequent scraps and mobile uploads from me.

Regards,
Lokesh Sapre
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***Sent from my Nokia E71***

random thought

Saw few guys in ties. Asked a question to myself. To work like a consultant, it is necessary to wear ties day in and out unless its a client facing scenario? Does wearing a tie make you feel like a consultant? Isn't it the work that you do which is more important in that sphere of your business domain rather than the appearance in office ( and remember, it's not client meetings that are to be attended). Why this false facade?  

the state of mind I am in these days :-)

and after I land on the national geo site and click on the careers section....this is the screen I get!

Oh well...it seems all restless people like me would be accessing the National Geo site. Well lemme try my luck with Discovery now :-)

Goodbye ABN AMRO

Got bit of sentimental after hearing that ABN AMRO's name would be changed to RBS (Royal bank of Scotland). Perhaps the reason is given the fact that I had been associated with ABN AMRO for the past 9-10 years or so. Not many of my colleagues know this but I was the Information Architect who was part of the design team that had created the the entire ABN AMRO net banking website.  This was way back in 2001 or something. I was working in an IT company in Delhi. We used to deal with ABN Delhi HO. This was my 1st experience of dealing with IA of a full fledged banking application. I remember the workshops that the design team and client used to have at ABN's CP office. We used to do endless rounds of white boarding & card sorting exercises to arrive on user mental models. Of course there were rounds of heated discussions also with the customer during the workshops which used to spice up our thinking process. In one such incidence we were discussing the Online Account Summary flow. The client had a 'banker's view of the same while we felt it won't work and presented end user's view point. It went on for some time. We took a prompt decision. We went down to the branch and randomly selected few users and expressed out point of view to understand what they feel and they agreed with our thinking! Bang on. The discussion was closed. The client team were a bunch of tough nuts but they accepted points when presented with logic & strong rational. When the banking website was launched, we had even created a banking site demo which used to be part of the online application for quite a few years. We had slipped in our names in the demo as account holders and shown lakhs of rupees in fictitious account number. That was the only closest way of demonstrating that we were quite rich! :-) 

When I shifted to Mumbai in 2003 my relation with the bank continued in form of corporate salary account which I got transferred to Pune when I shifted the base here in 2006. I still maintain the account and use the internet banking that I created. I have always loved ABN's services. In my 7 years relationship with the bank,I have only visited my bank once for sign verification else all my transactions have been carried online or through doorstep banking. After nearly 10 years of its online existence, I am glad to see that the core task flows and navigation of the net banking application has not changed at all. It's means a lot as it bears a stamp of users acceptance and seamless interaction & transaction that they have on the site. In fact I was told that the online site was referred as one of the best internet banking applications present in India. 

Now that the bank has been bought over by RBS, I hope the services that I enjoyed earlier would continue to be the same. It's very weird feeling calling my bank RBS now ;-) but hopefully over the period will get used to the new name now. :-)        

Foxed over flux!

I was in two minds about writing this post. This topic had been on my mind for quite some time but I was really dragging on this post. Well some personal experience around this topic last Friday triggered me to put my thoughts across – and of course some help from Sarah Palin!

Couple of the days ago, Sarah Palin called Twitter as ‘little twittering thing’. It was an innocent response to her reference to how speedily things happen on Twitter.  But what came out was the negative connotation rather than an endearing one.

Last week I was discussing an onsite project opportunity with one of the program mangers. Since they work a lot in embedded & desktop apps space, I highlighted them on how they can pitch for technologies like Silverlight & Flex in their projects which are the emerging technologies in RIA (Rich Internet Applications) space.  The Program manager replied ‘oh yeah we are aware of flex…it’s to do with UI skin & design…’. I told him it’s not just about UI skin but more to do with backend technologies which makes the interaction simple. He and his team mate reply ‘ but the flux presentation that you sent in proposal talked about that’. Which presentation I inquired, since I was managing the flex initiatives and I had never sent any prezo. The FLUX prezo – the guy replies. And then it struck me. He was referring to the new capability presentation sent by the usability practice titled: flux. I winced my teeth and politely went on to explain the bizarre branding name that has cropped up couple of months back.

The 1st time I heard about the new branding for usability team I was very surprised. I saw the branding in a team mate’s email signature and this is how it looked.       

The other variation of the branding I saw was like this: flUX which is used in document or as file name of any capability prezo or overview. It didn’t have any tag line along with it. Then I also see it in email credentials like this: flUX – The User Experience Group
 
Branding is a very important exercise and there are various aspects you need to keep in mind before going in for brand christening. Is branding needed for a usability group working in a pure play technology company – I’ll come to that part later but my 1st question to myself and to few peers around was what did flUX – the word meant to them. I was told by the mates who coined the branding that the reason behind using the word flUX is that in metallurgy flux is a chemical cleaning agent that removes oxides from the metal to be joined. Since in UX space we remove the ‘impurities’ related to ‘bad experience’ hence flUX. To add to the touch was the byline ‘flawless user experience’, the ‘fl’ from flUX stands for flawless and ‘UX’ for user experience. Neat. But do people really understand that’s how the term got coined? When put on a ppt or when sent in a document to customer/prospect/internal stake holders – will they understand what flUX means? From my last week experience I don’t think so. Intelligence doesn’t always sell. In colloquial language flux most of the times is used in negative connotation. It means ‘uncertainty’. His mind was in a state of flux over the decision. 8 out of 10 times in spoken language it will be commonly used to express a state of indecisiveness. The remaining 2 times folks in white coats would be using it. The point that I want to make is when it comes to branding, you also need to consider all these aspects, debate it out, research and then proceed. By discussing it internally with 2-3 practice guys or getting the branding feedback done from few external ex- college design friends won’t help in discovering the real issues. A brand name needs to be really thought through; researched and extensive feedback needs to be taken.    

 I know that one of the lessons in branding is also to make your brand stand out, think of uncommon brand names/acronyms, to have a recall value but you need to consider that the brand name unknowingly doesn’t give different context meanings. Also as my flex-flux experience highlighted, the brand shouldn’t get confused with something else, especially in a technology company where the word got confused with a core technology which the company is building capabilities in.  

More than often, you might not be available for any presentation or physically won’t be present when flux branded collateral would be presented or discussed. The luxury of ‘Hi we are from usability practice and our group is named as flux which stands for flawless user experience…” won’t be available. Then what?

Francois gossieaux in his article on customer vs brand advocacy says “most buying decisions happen when your people are not in the room – not part of the conversations that lead to buying decisions. So for them (your company’s marketing team) to be brand advocates is to a certain degree a waste of time. What you need is for your customers and prospects to be your brand advocates.” And this is where the 2nd important point of my whole take on branding comes in.

Should branding be done for usability team or the services that they pitch? Your customers be it internal stakeholders or external one will not recall your group brand name when they need your services. When there is a need for UI design/evaluation etc, do you think the question that will pop up in their mind would be “hey we need to call flux guys in for this”? No. Don’t be under any illusion. For your internal stakeholders, you will always be known as the ‘usability team’, ‘UI team’ , ‘UI guys’ – irrespective of any fancy name that you coin. When the call would come, the top of the mind recall would be usability, UI design, html developer and NOT flux. Similarly for external customers flux will not make any sense. They would be approaching ‘the company‘for certain services which may or may not be aligned to UI/design and not flux. Even if you send them capability branded doc all pasted with flux – their final call of action would be with ‘the company’ and NOT the branded group. Don’t expect the customer to call the company and say “ I need the flux team services for my website revamp”.

Brands need to be created in usability but these should be around the services that you offer. Create brands around your specialized offerings. Let these be the talking point amongst your internal stakeholders and customers. Your well executed work itself becomes a brand within the organization and has a better recall value for the employee and the group than any fancy brand names. Create brands around your resources who come with niche skills.  Their skills and knowledge in the specialized area would indirectly reflect upon company’s capabilities and your practice and help in getting business.

To sum up this branding discussion, signing off with a testimonial that one of the UX person recently received from an internal stakeholder.  Notice the highlighted part.

“…... Minor details on the portal in terms of graphic representation was taken care of well by co-ordinating with others in the UE (Flux?) team…”

The question mark still remains.

Tiger is back in his woods :-)

So the news is that Tiger Woods is out of Sex rehabilitation centre and trying to get back in his normal life – of course he has still not made public appearance. Often I wonder what this ‘sex rehabilitation centre’ would be like. The idea is to cure a person from his ‘disease’ which in this case his regular sexual affairs. So how do they test if the person is cured? In the 1^st place, how to they treat the person? Do they make him watch some religious discourse followed by a lap dance by some skimpily dressed gal and observe if the erection is happening and at what pace? J Or perhaps tie the person up to zillions of wires and check his beats to see if is he still getting excited by watching naked gals dancing in front of him. Let me google on what they do and hope to publish another post on it soon :-) 

Blogging sabbatical

I noticed that last year I just posted one single post! It's very surprising for me since till a year before that I was heavily blogging. This year I promise it would be different. My dear friend Sahana who herself is an avid blogger & the queen of tweets has suggested I start a photo blog. I am toying with that idea too. Very soon I'll be posting my road trip blogs along with snaps. Hope I'll gain back my motivation to write and write passionately. :)

The new tablet on the block - Ipad

Those who have followed Steve Jobs closely through his career would be aware that the king pin of Apple doesn’t sell products. He sells experience. Right from the 80s days when the famous Mac TVC brought in a revolutionary change in the desktop industry to the visual experience of seeing a notebook being pulled out of an envelope. It was no surprise that the most awaited launch of recent time – the Apple tablet bore the same aura and excitement generally you will find at Oscars. Given Apple’s panache for creating mega hype for any product launch, little wonder everyone was super excited on what Steve would produce this time. And boy, they were not disappointed. So finally we have the Apple Ipad and as expected it has created a stormy debate on blogs and technology forums. The main bone of discussion has been – where does it fit in? It’s an Iphone/Itouch on steroids minus the ability to make a call and still not in a league where it can be qualified as a notebook. So has Apple created the biggest blunder by creating a product that doesn’t fit into any category or have they embarked on a bold attempt to create a new market segment?

Experience Sells. Apple products have always been driven around experience. Be it the visual appeal or the sheer joy of experiencing the interaction on any of the apple product. Experience, like brands are not built overnight. And with Apple who has set the benchmark for interaction experience, users always expect the next product from their stable to take the experience a notch higher. If you would have seen the key note that Steve Jobs delivered, his maximum emphasis was around the experience that a user would enjoy with the product. A key aspect in all his key notes has always been the demo that Steve delivers around the product. Steve never ‘sells’ the products. His demos do the job of selling. A simple tap here, a light touch to flick the ebook on the Ipad, the rotatable bookstore, the email keypad, the rotatable browser – notice how he casually went through the key user journeys on the Ipad, as the audience experienced it in delight. Didn’t it make you feel you want to grab that product right away? That’s experience – a hallmark of all Apple products.

Experience creates demand. In Apple’s case it’s their brilliant marketing strategy that has also fuelled up any demand for their product. The sheer aura that they manage to create around any of their product launch helps in creating anticipation and the experience of the product converts that anticipation into a demand. In Ipad’s case I believe Apple has boldly ventured on a path of creating a new market segment. A product that fits between a laptop & a smart phone like iphone. The question is, will they manage to create the demand? I believe yes. Thanks to Ipad, we will see a rise of a new segment of users who would like to ride on the convergence wave that Ipad promises. Apple’s ‘tempting’ pricing strategy for ipad will ensure that conversions happen. With ipad, Apple has also blown the war trumpet against ebook hardware manufacturers like Kindle and taken the storming bull by its horn. Their venture in ebooks with launch of ibooks application in ipad is a bold attempt to walk into the ebook territory. Of course, you don’t expect ebooks addicts to buy ipad for just the books application and they would very well stick to portable devices like Kindle. Already a storm in brewing up in ebooks industry with publishers picking up sides on which side of the hardware manufactures there would like to be. Will this be another Blueray v/s HD DVD in making?.

On the flip side what I didn’t like about Ipad is the limited hard disk space that is bundled into the device. 64GB?? This device is not an ipod but has been pitched as an entertainment solution. Games, movies, photos. Load all that up plus few more softwares and very soon you will start feeling a pinch for space. Imagine, sitting at airport lounge and plugging in an external HDD to the sleek looking ipad. While ipad has provision of mini GSM card for 3G model, I wonder if they will launch 3G model in India as I am not sure if mini GSM are available with telecom operators.
Over all I feel apple has lived up to their brand name and have managed to create a storm. But they need to watch out as Google is just round the corner fine turning their version of the tablet. Already their Android platform and the decision to enter the smart phone segment have started giving Steve Jobs nightmare.

For ipad, will they manage to convert foot falls into purchases when they launch it in March? Only time will tell.