Kshitiz Anand

I recently came across this article by Joe Fletcher titled “The Bridge Between Cultures and Design”
The synopsis of the article is that:
Over roughly the last 10 years, China and India have given way to a huge rise in technology outsourcing. Jobs are outsourced from companies like Microsoft, Google, T-Mobile, Honeywell, and many others. In Microsoft I’ve worked with teams in both India and China developing software for a variety of uses. Having our headquarters in the US, I usually work with small satellite teams in these countries. I couldn’t help but wonder why these countries who had become huge in the area of software technology, struggled so much in the area of user experience and UI innovation.Note: this article refers specifically to software UX. Both of these countries have very innovative and creative aspects in other areas of their culture, and I’m not expressing these comments as blanket statements.

I think that is a very valid question that Joe puts across. However I do not quite agree to all the points that he mentions in the article especially if one is looking at the case of India.

Cross Cultural Design

One of the key things required to see is the growth of UX as a field in India. While in the west the field UX, Interaction Design, HCI have been around for much longer a time, in India it is know only for say last 5-6 years.

This leads us the point that in India, Interaction Design has a long way to go before it catches up on the west. In my opinion, in India, the Interaction Design as a field is still limited to the software industry and all the User Experience is still discussed in the context of the Software Design. Unless the understanding of Interaction Design, expands beyond the UI,  and people understand Interaction Design from a more broader perspective, there is bound to be this case as expressed above.

Also Interaction Design as a discipline in the academics has only been offered only lately in the design schools. The study of HCI and USability is still very limited. Most of the professionals practicing in the IxD field in India are either graduates in Product Design or Visual Communication. A lot of the professionals thus have been in the field by virtue of their self learnings.However that is changing, with Interaction Design and related studies being offered at numerous schools in India and a keen interest by professionals to follow the subject. Some of the schools doing that are offering course in HCI are the National Institute of Design, Industrial Design Centre (IIT Bombay), IIT Guwahati to name a few.

Thirdly, there has to be more freedom given to the ‘design’ teams sitting in the off shore location (read India), in order to allow to innovate. It is my belief that only when the design starts from the initial stage, there is a scope for innovation and creativity. Creativity is hampered when things are already created. So having the design team sitting in the off shore location, start to innovate when all the requirements and the information architecture is frozen, is difficult. It’s not impossible, but the scope gets reduced and there is only a limit to what one can do at that stage.

Lastly, the design industry or people in the software industry who do design, should interact more with people in the colleges, and illustrate what it takes to innovate and get creativity at the job level where its much more competitive and challenging. We at Deskala, have been doing so through our Design Workshops in HCI, Design Thinking, Usability, Experience Design at corporate houses and various colleges, and the results have been giving us a lot of hope more than anything else!

Of late a lot has been going on in the Mobile Domain. Needless to say, as designers, we have a huge role to play in the design of phones, its applications and the services associated with it.I have been following the Mobile market in an emerging market like India, very closely. With the tariff for the rates going down to the wire, where there is not further possibility of a reduction in the prices, User Experience and Customer Service IS going to be the differentiator.

Here below are three presentations that I came across today, while doing my readings in Mobile User Experience. I am sure each of them would have been more interesting to attend!

A wonderful presentation, with a good insight into the domain of Mobile User Experience, and what Web Designers (and Interaction  /User experience Designers) need to look into, when designing experiences for the mobile phone.

And then there is this presentation, that gives a sneak peak into the future. Of the exciting times that Mobile User Experience is going to bring along with it. What I am more interested in is how these high end phones can look to get into the emerging markets, provide similar experiences at a low cost.

I remember Pranav Mistry in his TED India talk mentioning about the need to make the Sixth Sense project open source, and thereby reducing the costs considerably. This would ensure that the technology is able to reach the masses and not just be limited to the elite.

I read a cartoon strip the other day.
One mother to the other: My son is with a book always! How cool is that!
The other mother: On that’s nice. His grades must be really good then as he is with a book always.
First mother: He is on FaceBook. :)

Have you been bit by the Facebook bug yet ? I must admit that I have been to some extent. However there have been many other issues of concern that I have been having. One of them being the importance of maintaining my privacy.

The way people use Facebook, Orkut and other social networking sites (SNS) have been a matter of interest to me. This difference is also a result of the cultural differences people have across countries. The fact is also that people have taken a conscious decision on their part (or alteast have thought about it), when it comes to decide what information that they want to share .

One of the things that I always face a problem is the amount of information that I would be sharing on these SNS. Facebook now is the first choice of people to share images amongst friends. I have heard many people request me to upload my professional photographs on Facebook.  I have done so only to a limited extent.

Another large chunk of people use Facebook as a way of letting the world know each and every activity that they do. I mean seriously, is there any reason why I should know in such detail what the other person is doing. If I do, then it is a serious case of intruding into the other person’s privacy. However, wait! I did not intrude… It’s you who made that information public. So there is something going on here and this is where the notion of Publicy comes into the picture. It is not to be confused with the original concept of Publicy, which was commonly understood as the opposite of privacy.

What i am really talking about, is the publicy in a different context. Laurent Haug, writes about this phenomenon in his blog post titled “Publicy, the re-birth of privacy” . I think the post captures the essence of the phenomenon that is hitting the young generation today and is definitely something to think over. I know for a fact that after reading his post, I rethought about the stuff I posted up on the SNS.

A workout plan

Also, now I realize that the more that I spend time on these SNS, the more stuck to my laptop I am. I get more addicted to it. The kind of activities do not involve taking up the quizzes of playing online games, but its mostly just meeting and talking to people. I often fail to make myself understand why I cannot just go out and meet people in person. I do realize that I am starting to have a more of a virtual life and presence than that in the physical space.

And I think that is wrong. There is a certain charm of meeting up people in person, and that cannot be replicated by any virtual experience, no matter how realistic they claim to be.

I am sure numerous others would be in a similar if not same position. And needless to say that due to this shortage of time spending outside, there are a lot of health issues that could come up.

Here is something of a workout that someone came up with. I think it is pretty cool and people should follow it! I admit to not having come even close, but everytime I see it, I feel guilty.

Increasing the User Experience in SNS, aims at retaining the users for a longer period of time. However this should not come at the cost of the other things.

At the same time, I am highly interested in, and have actually been thinking whether the power of the social networking, penetration of the mobile phones and other technology, can be used in the domains where they can actually make a larger difference and that is for the mankind.