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.

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

Here’s wishing everyone a very happy and prosperous OH10!

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.

The bootstrapped approach:

Whatever idea you have, if you plan to implement it yourself, you need time. Not to say that you cannot moonlight for a couple of months before you dive into the deep end. It’s just that things will be easier and take less time if you’re giving it your full attention. This is obviously assuming that your idea does not require a large sum of money to get things off the ground (read: capital investment).

Here’s how to bootstrap

• Quit your day job, get a small garage or a room as office space, get an internet connection and start implementing (my thoughts here are heavily biased towards internet startups and related products).
• No matter how convinced you are about your idea, write a business plan and think about all possible revenue models. Remember, if your idea isn’t making money then it simply won’t work. There has to be a sustainable revenue model for any idea to be successful.
• Keep your core idea close to your chest, yet talk to as many people as you can to gauge how your product/service shall be received in the market.
• Reserve namespace. If you have already thought of a name for your idea, then reserve the hell out of that name. Reserve domains, reserve twitter handles, facebook pages. They will come in use later when you are promoting.
• Find a mentor – everyone usually has a relative who has his/her own business and have been running it for a while. Advice from experienced people is unmeasurable.
• Recruit known people if you have to, ask friends to help out. Find a good designer or coder who is relatively new to the field and will freelance for a lot less money than people who are experienced. You will need to guide them at every step, but eventually it will be a worthy investment.
• Very importantly, implement as quickly as you possibly can, and release a prototype in 3 months. I remember reading about the Urbanspoon story and it said the very same thing – if you don’t ship quickly, you will not make it.
• Find partners. If there are people you know who are working in a similar field, partner with them. The value of finding the right partners is again unmeasurable. It will save you a lot of time, and help you get your idea implemented quicker.
• Borrow money if required, but only from close relatives and friends as opposed to banks (who may harass you later if you screw up).
• Once you’re implementation is complete, sell sell sell! Wear your brand. Be your brand. Promote the hell out of it! Tell your friends about it, tell your friends to tell theirs. Tell your parents to tell their friends about it. Keep pestering people to spread the word. Remember, word of mouth marketing still requires the right mouth! If you know journos, call them and tell them your story.
• Don’t waste money attending startup conferences and traveling unnecessarily initially. Save all that for later.

Once you do all these things (and do them well) then you may be assured that your product/service is doing well (assuming the idea was solid in the first place!). If you start making money within the first year – awesome! If you don’t – no worries, keep persisting. In the mean time, make sure you have completed all the formalities pertaining to legal activities. Register your company, apply for a patent, copyright your name, register your logo, make sure your financials are in place, repay loans.

There are pros and cons to this method as you may imagine. The biggest pro is that this is a very hands on approach and you will thoroughly enjoy it every step of the way. You will love what you are doing and you will never regret anything (again, assuming the idea is solid in the first place!). On the other hand, the cons are the risk involved. If your idea isn’t as solid as you initially thought it was then you’re in a big mess and you’ve lost 2 years of your life. Hence the importance to write your business plan to iron out all wrinkles relating to revenue at the very outset.

The formal approach:

Onto the second approach. I call this the formal approach because it is not as informal and loose as the first approach. They are differentiated purely at what stage you would approach investors. If you’re bootstrapping, you would convince investors by showing them a prototype in action and in the formal approach, you will try to make an investor look at your idea how you see it. Here’s how:

• Get a mentor to guide you on all the following steps.
• Write a business plan.
• Write an executive summary in one page. Say what pain points your idea solves and how.
• Document your ideas about revenue sources and support it with relevant research.
• Make revenue projections and expenditure forecasts. Calculate how much money you will be making in 3 years or even 5 years if you can think that far ahead. Take everything into consideration when you’re making expenditure forecasts. Keep a 50% margin even if you think you have it all measured out.
• Do some market research. Identify your target audience. Talk to as many family and friends about the idea as you possibly can. Prepare a questionnaire and get random people to fill them. Make online surveys, put out polls, email all your friends. Get as much data as you possibly can.
• Identify your competition. Think about competition in unconventional ways (a newspaper can be a competitor to an online local search engine).
• Analyze your competition. Talk to your competitors if possible, send out emails to their CEOs. Find out how they go about things.
• Compile, document and format. Make a presentation or write a whitepaper.
• Prepare an elevator pitch. If your pitch cannot grab an investor’s attention in the first 10 seconds then there’s no way he’ll pay attention to the rest. Pitch your pitch to as many people as you can before approaching an investor. Constantly keep improving and practising your pitch. Find catchlines and tag phrases that will help push your idea in a more catchy way. Record yourself on your webcam and observe where you can improve yourself. Upload it to youtube to send it to friends who are not nearby.
• And finally, when you’re going in for an investor meeting dress confidently and comfortably. Don’t unnecessarily wear a suit or a tie if you’re not comfortable in it. It’s not going to help you convince the investor any better than your words, actions and documents can.

That’s about it. The second approach requires you to have done your homework.

In this post I will not talk about how to find investors because that is simply out of the scope of this article. Maybe I will write about it when I do discover their secret hiding places. In this day and age there are a lot more people willing to take a detour from the beaten path and do something different. I hope this information will help people who are just entering the pool by themselves and give them a float so that they may learn to swim. Do add your own experiences in the comments. I am @sidv on twitter in case you want to start a conversation with me there.

NOTE: The thoughts above are purely my learnings over the last few years with regard to entrepreneurship. These learnings are put down here merely to help people starting out on their own.

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!

1. Macbook Pro
2. PC
3. iPhone
4. Sony Hifi
5. Television

And here are the various output sources I have at home:

1. Inbuilt Laptop Speakers
2. Bose SoundDock Portable
3. Sony Hifi
4. Creative Inspire 2.1

I bought the SoundDock for obvious sound superiority and the ability to play music directly off my phone. Now the problem was that whenever I would get an SMS or a call, the music would stop and to attend to my phone I would have to disconnect it from the dock. The SoundDock has a 3.5mm audio port for aux inputs. I figured I could use that more effectively. So here’s what I did:

1. Bought a Apple AirPort Express 802.11n (Rs. 4700 in India) which coupled with iTunes can stream music wirelessly from your computer and output to any speaker that is connected to it.
2. I configured it to connect to my wireless network and connected it to the Bose SoundDock using a 2m audio cable (The 2m is not needed, the store didn’t have a shorter cable!)
3. Now via iTunes and AirTunes I can stream music wirelessly around my house. Also, I can play music simultaneously on all the speakers connected via AirTunes (Note: For every speaker you want to connect, you will need one AirPort Express)
4. Installed the Remote app on my iPhone via the AppStore and I have an easy access to my iTunes library. I can also switch AirTunes speakers through the Remote app. Brilliant!
5. Now I got a little more greedy. The problem with AirTunes is that you can stream audio only from iTunes. No system sounds or movies etc. Did some googling and voila! – AirFoil to the rescue. This small application runs in the background and “hacks” into your AirTunes to allow audio to be streamed from videos as well. There is an obvious lag of 2 seconds or so due to the wireless nature of the link. But this can be overcome if you use the video player that AirFoil provides. Another alternative is to use VLCs audio desync feature to manually adjust the synchronisation of the audio and video streams (hit and try to get the right settings).

So there you go, listen to music wirelessly throughout your house. Also try out SweetFM – it’s a last.fm client (only for macs presently). There are obviously a lot of different ways you can achieve this and I would like to hear how you did it. This method is much cheaper than alternatives such as Bose that offer similar results but at a much much higher price.

Download Normal Screen or Wide Screen.