Does it really accomplish anything? Or it is an illusion to satisfy the user that his computer has suddenly been cleansed of all the dirt that was accumulated while working it so hard? I haven’t researched what really happens when you RightClickToRefresh, but I’m sure it’s pretty insignificant (guys at MS: do correct me if I’m wrong).

I moved to a mac recently and I was shocked and surprised that there was no equivalent to the RCTR in Mac OS. The closest that came was RightClickToCleanUp. But then that does something – it puts the icons in your desktop in a neat order. But I don’t like my icons in order, and more often than not I find myself using it simply because I need to satiate my RightClickToRefresh itch.

I have done some thinking and introspection as to why I have the itch and I have come upon a theory. I call it “The Zero of User Experience”. Much like Aryabhatta who many years ago discovered that was something in nothing and called it Zero. What is Zero? Zero is that number in our number system that denotes a value of nothing. Extend the same concept to usability and interfaces and you have things like RCTR in Windows. Photoshop has the arrow tool that doesn’t really do much else but help move your layers around. Alias has a context menu that literally says “Nothing”. Solidworks has the Esc button that deselects everything and cleans up your selections.

What do you guys think? Do you feel drawn to find a function in your favourite software that accomplishes nothing? Do you have the RCTR itch? Hit me up in the comments!

Designed to be tamper proof, this digital fare meter will completely eliminate the need for haggling for fares. Powered by a GPS chip that tremendously increases accuracy over traditional mechanical methods, the A-Rix can even display additional information such as the name of the area you are in and the road you are travelling on. The driver’s life is also made easier to a certain extent – people will not question his meter’s accuracy and the fare calculation automatically increases during night time.

The A-Rix does not require any additional framework and easily integrates into the existing auto framework. The big green light at the rear side aids the waiting passenger to easily identify if an auto is already taken or not. This was designed for the Indian auto rickshaw segment but can be easily extended into other countries and other vehicles. The interface of the meter is designed to be easily readable during both day and night. The features of the A-Rix are below:

Video Courtesy: Rohit Bhat

This can be taken up as a drive by the local authorities to equip all autos with this device. Inquiries for commercialization are welcome. Please email sidv@me.com

UPDATE: A-Rix got featured on Yanko Design! Here’s the link.

A-Rix – Auto Rickshaw Meter by Siddharth Vanchinathan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at sidv.co.

User interfaces are everywhere. From the newspaper you read in the morning, checking emails at office, dispensing coffee, visiting a hospital, even your alarm clock. Good user interfaces, well that’s something else!

Imagine for a moment that you’re an alien from Mars approaching Earth to conquer it. You walk out from your spaceship and find something on the ground that you can hold in your hands. Suddenly, it starts emitting a shrill noise, and with the fright you drop  it thinking it’s a weapon or worse, a bomb. It falls to the ground, but the shrill sound doesn’t stop. It does look pretty harmless though, so you pick it up. You examine it and you find something that is protuding out. You press it down and the alarm clock that you are holding in your hands goes silent. Obviously, since you haven’t been introduced to the context of a clock, you have no clue whatsoever what a “circular face with some writings” with two “hands” makes a clock. But you also need to be introduced to the context of the button on top of the clock that turns off the alarm. Without that knowledge you would have no idea of how to turn it off.

Same goes for all the other physical and virtual objects we interact with everyday. It is the endeavour of us designers to make our life difficult in order to make the object simple and easy to use for the user. Now what defines “simple and easy?”. The interface should be simple enough to be understood by your Mom and easy enough to not require a manual to use. This is the greatest usability test one can try. Before releasing a design or uploading a website, show it to your mom and ask her what she thinks of it. Can she use it within 5 minutes of your introducing her to it?  This is something I keep in mind whenever I design and it is my constant endeavour to simplify. That’s not always the easiest thing to do, and sometimes functionality comes in the way. And then you have to compromise one for the other.

Let me take an example. My mom had her first email account on Rediff. She was quite used to that interface and even when they updated it, she chose to stick on to the old interface. She knows her way around there – from where to find contacts, to where all the email folders are. I recently got her signed up on gmail. She started using it parallely with rediff. After a couple of weeks I happened to notice her using gmail. She was finding it quite difficult to grasp the concept of how the emails are displayed and why do they have a number in brackets next to the ones she had replied to etc. I then told her that it is not a single mail, but gmail shows them as conversations. It was only then that she understood the concept and then she had overcome her fear of using gmail and started using it regularly. I’m sure you have had a similar experience when you use a service for the first time. Unless you have seen a tutorial video or read up some instructions, it is very difficult to get started immediately.

The results of the test are quite intangible and feedback that you can get from it can be very vague at times. Visual/Textual cues are very important to ease navigation around an interface. Use large readable text wherever possible. Use graphical icons to indicate function if the text becomes too much. Avoid clutter and use colours to differentiate various aspects of the interface. Also, efficiency is the key – doing the absolute most possible with what you have.

The tips above are very basic and can be used by anyone who’s making an interface. Special attention to software developers who are often required to do UI work as part of their job. Don’t try to make your life easier by making things complex. Complicate your life to make your user’s life simple.

A lot of talk around Pepsi’s new logo – a lot more negative talk than positive. Personally I like the previous logos better, this one is trying really hard to be something else. My concept is just a new way of looking at the old Pepsi logo and could maintain recognition without changing around things too much. Hit me up on the comments on what you think about the logo (Remember, this is not exactly logo-fied completely, it’s simply a render of a 3d model, so a lotta flaws are still present in it).

#whyisketchlogos to disguise the fact that the actual logo was already in my head within 2 minutes of the brief

Got a reply from Armin Vit from Under Consideration saying that my quote was chosen and I would be getting the book soon! Almost a month later it finally arrived in my mail! Here it is!

And here’s my quote:

Thanks to the guys at Under Consideration!

Download Normal Screen or Wide Screen.

It all started with me wanting to become a product designer quite a while back. When I gave my CEED exam the year I was graduating (2008), I was not aware of the procedure of admission at IDC (Industrial Design Center) and presumed it would begin after the results were declared. To my shock, I find from the day the results are out, I have only a week to prepare my application and send it by post all while I was working at Cisco doing my internship. “What logic is that?” I said to myself and dismissed IDC as a bunch of people who didn’t know logic. I was ignorant, forgive me.

Cut to 2009, I am working at a design studio run by an ex-IDCian. I now know a lot more about it and I consider it to be one of the top design schools in India (or atleast my research told me so). I was more keen on applying abroad – but decided at the last minute to give it a shot. My CEED score from the previous year was valid this year too. So I fill in my application, complete the three “tasks” allotted and send it in. During this application process I discover that the CEED is merely a qualifying exam for IIT Bombay and a host of other colleges. The colleges then conduct their own tests to shortlist candidates for admission. No logic here either, the CEED is a good exam! According to me, it is a pretty good indicator of your aptitude for design. Anyway, I am noone to decide this, so I went along with the process.

One month later, the list comes up on the IDC website with my name on it along with 300 others. I am supposed to receive a call letter confirming my selection for the next round but I get none. A quick phone call to the IDC office and they say it’s ok, come along anyway. So me and my friend (who incidentally also got selected) book flight tickets for Bombay for all the three days of the selection process.

Cut to today – 18th June, 2009. Reached Bombay early in the morning and reached the IIT campus just in the nick of time. Had a tough time finding our way to the Convocation Hall (the venue of the test, considering IDC is part of IIT – they should do something about their wayfinding signage – it’s pretty pathetic!). The test entails designing a vegetable carrier to be mounted on a bicycle. According to me I had a pretty good solution and I had presented it well. I noticed that the table in front of me (bearing roll no IDC-067 – if you’re reading this, congrats you got selected!) was empty – ABSENT!. Results were to be announced at 5 PM.

Off Topic: One warning to people joining IIT Bombay – Hostel 6 is pretty sad. Manipal hostels rock!

Back to the topic: We decided to drop back into the main IDC building to check it out and look at our future department and the kind of work that’s going on. To be frank, I was very very impressed with the Visual Communication dept. Swarna – the design degree show was on all the work done by the grads this year were on show. Again VC was impressive. Most people designing mobile applications seem to be over inspired by the iphone icons though – no originality in that respect. Product design was not too impressive and I shall leave it at that. Outside there were posters of each department (there are 4 – product, visual, animation and interaction) with a one liner tag line for each. Anim said: We not only move lines, we move people. Interaction said: Let the two halves of your brain interact (or something to that effect). VC had a good line too. PD said “Aesthetics with practicality”. Hmmmm, now PD is not only aesthetics is it? and who does copy for things like this! Totally put me off. Back to the main topic, I seem to be straying a lot.

A First List was published with selected candidates and was immediately withdrawn since it contained gross errors – candidate’s name appeared twice etc etc. After another hour long wait, the next list came out and to be frank I was pretty confident that I would clear the test atleast. I didn’t. Neither did my buddy. I went through the list a couple of times, checking each name twice just to make I hadn’t missed out. Surprise! Surprise! Roll 067′s name is on the list! Wow!

Ok now here’s the deal. If the profs who conduct this selection process are reading, then listen up! You don’t call 300 people to Bombay from all over India just to give a test (300 in PD, I’m not sure about the numbers in the other depts). If you’re calling them to your city, atleast give them a chance to talk to you, give them an interview. You don’t send 210 people back on the basis of not clearing a test. This is the design field, you cannot judge somebody’s design capabilities by what they do in a 1.5 hr exam. You need to look through their portfolio, see their work and talk to them about their ideas. If you had to conduct a test to reduce numbers, do it in the major cities, or do it as a part of the application, or do it online!

I am quite relieved that I was not on that list. Because joining such a design school would be quite a waste of 2 years (You may think this is a case of sour grapes, it probably is). If you read my previous post it talked about design education in India and the problems with it. Now the confusion is gone – it is “to go”.

India:
After I complete 2 years of my Master’s, I would work somewhere for a year or two and then I would have a big enough network when I start my own practice. Education is cheap here and most designers do it for the sake of validating their work in the future. People in India don’t usually take you and your work seriously unless you have a degree to prove it. So, I save on time and money but at the same time I probably don’t get a quality education and exposure that I would get abroad.

Abroad:
Here’s where real education happens. Where you are encouraged to explore and go crazy. Spending two years in University will be like a lifetime given the amount of work required, but at the end of it, you emerge a better designer, better manager and a better human. Downside is that I do want to come back to India and settle down. Starting my practice would require a lot more time then – by my calculations atleast 5-6 years more after the degree. I will work abroad to recover my tuition fees for atleast 2 years and by the time I come back to India, I would have lost touch with the people and the places. Hence another 2 years working in India to develop my network all over again.

Arrgghh… dilemma dilemma! Someone have any bright ideas?

My Portfolio v2

[EDIT] There was a mistake with the schedule on 22nd April – Sorry! Here are the updated ones.