User Experience for Mobile and Desktops

It took a couple of hours to figure out there is a simple and new way to boot and install OS using USB flash drives in Netbooks, Laptops and even our desktops. Note : Hardware that are older or that doesnt support Booting from USB ports cannot be used. So make sure your hardware's BIOS has support for booting through USB Floppy, USB Disk options. Consult your hardware's manual to find out. Items needed: 1. USB Drive (more than 1 GB) 2. Your Windows XP installation Disk 3. WinToFlash - Free utility to make a USB drive bootable (NT, XP, Vista and Windows 7). Also it copies the OS installation files 4. Obviously a prep hardware - a working desktop or laptop with CD Drive. How to make a bootable USB Flash drive? Earlier, creating a bootable USB flash drive involved a tedious process of downloading a HP flash drive format utility and working with BartPE utility. But now, WinToFlash has been launced. The 0.5 beta version is really good and conveniently stable, such that

Those days when internal blogs were introduced, it was fun. People shared information, wrote their own articles, various subjects, unique bloggers and a whole new dimension of noon-time-wasting opened out. Now as more and more people join the company, and many new people think that blog is more of a making-fun of others place. It's so sad, that only a few is continuing to post, while new people just copy-paste for the sake of posting. Also there is a new breed of comment-vultures, who vent out all their alter-ego's posing as "GUEST" in the comments section. Altogether, the blogs is more of a trash now. Did I mention that I stopped blogging in our company's internal blogs?

Under construction...

I am attending the Usability Meet at iNautix on November 7, 2009 at Ascendas IT Park in Chennai. Some 13 companies are participating in the meet. 2 years ago, Satyam hosted such a meet, but it didnt catch up well later. Anyone who likes to attend pls contact Mr. Arun of iNautix. Contact details below. Arun Christian Assistant Vice President Usability and Graphics Team iNautix Technologies India Private Limited, an affiliate of Pershing LLC, a subsidiary of The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation http://www.inautix.co.in Office: 91-44-22546000 Extension 1390, VOIP: 5064 Fax: 91-44-22540661 - Rajesh

Stack overflow, overload, system critical... all such alerts come up when a system is overloaded. And sometimes, a re-boot is very much necessary. Not only this applies to the non-life forms like Electronics, it is applicable for humans too. For the past 20 days, I was very much in a state of "Mental Overload" at work and now slowly re-booting to start up fresh ! Some people take up vacations, they explore new interests, talk to friends etc. But in work, such a thing is not possible for everyone. During the past 20 days, I was down, tired and did only the basic jobs at work. After the 20 days, now I feel a lot better and my mind is fresh, thinking clearer, and feels energized. Unicorn is getting ready! You don't need a Landmark Forum to re-build yourself... :-D

Thought of preparing a 2D price map for all car models available from Maruti Suzuki India. Maruti aims for the mid-range to premium hatchbacks it seems. Click the image below to open full size. Prices collected from www.marutisuzuki.com as on 15 October 2009. Accuracy not guarenteed.

I do use sulekha.com occasionally to sell my old items. Now a days, Sulekha.com has transformed into a aggressive Business directory along with a Classifieds section. One reason I find that Sulekha.com sucks is because there is no clear welcome page for a visitor. There are 3 possible visitors for sulekha.com 1. One who comes looking for Online Classifieds 2. One who comes looking for Business Directory 3. One who comes from some other linking site knowingly or unknowingly. The home page or landing page is a clear mess of everything. By throwing all the links in the home page, they have created a tough navigation for a classified seeker and Business seeker. You cannot predict which link will lead to what section! Had there been a clear classification of services or atleast a search that has options to choose my search between Classifieds or Yellow Pages or Both, life would be much more easier in the home page. Right now, I have to click on the BUY/SELL tab or link in order to access cl

[Coming up.. ] Temporarily you can find out my quick and dirty guide for configuring WordPress to support Unicode fonts here .

UPS is a must have accessory for every computers in India. Sudden power failures and surge in supply are common everywhere. To protect valuable data from getting corrupted, it is a must to buy a good UPS. Before we go into the topic, it is essential to understand the types of UPS. What are the types of UPS available? For consumer use, 3 types of UPS - Online, Off-line (stand by) and Line-interactive UPS are available. Online UPS: To explain in simple terms, this UPS supplies AC power to your computer which is converted from the power produced by the battery connected to it. The battery is constantly re-charged by a AC-DC convertor on the other end. Offline UPS: When the mains supply is on, the UPS will pass thru the mains supply to the computer. If mains is cut, it will use a DC-AC convertor and produce power from the attached battery. Line Interactive UPS: Uses a combination of invertor/convertor circuit. When the mains is on, it recharges the battery and produces power

Eureka Forbes - India's leading provider of consumer Water purification treatment, Vacuum cleaning solutions and Air purifiers uses the old direct marketing / selling technique. ,For everything - right from demo, purchase and support, you interact with a proper sales guy. Well this is far better than interacting with a show room sales guy right? Yes it is. But sometimes it is awfully pathetic when dealing with Eureka Forbes people. Let me give you my experience. I was interested in knowing the price of a newly launched Wet & Dry vacuum cleaner. Their website quoted - Rs.9990. Then, I wanted to check if there is any EMI options available for purchasing. Sadly, there was no details about that. Finally I resorted CONTACT EUREKA FORBES through the online form. After submitting the form asking for EMI options and details, I received a call from their chennai office the next day, informing that a sales guy will meet me for giving a demo. I told the caller that I was not asking for a

Looks like it is hacking season. Most of the online social networking sites are being targeted like this. Recently areapal was hacked and my contacts received a lot of spam messages. It appears that hackers are becoming more and more painful by hacking sites and stealing users data. Beginning this month, Campaignmonitor.com was hacked and many users received spam messages. Though campaign monitor was able to fix the security breach, the damage done was done. More and more the services get networked, the security issues becomes a problem.

It is high-time for rediff to think about hiring a UX / IxD guy. Looks like the recent rediff redesign is aimed at keeping things simple. And that was taken way too seriously. The Rediff shopping is a clear example of how narrow navigation affects the user experience of a site. A shopping site should offer a quick, go-anywhere type of accessible navigation. The new rediff instead, focuses on narrow navigation. Once you select a category, your stuck into it. You cannot come back to the previous category or main category. Now to come back, one must use the browser back button or click the Rediff shopping logo to reach the home page. The categories are a next PITA thing. Look below. Do you think you can find Womens Earrings easily? I believe the new Rediff Shopping is one of the best live examples of "how not to design a online shopping site?". Too bad, they need a couple of Interaction Designers and UX guys! - Rajesh Sundaram

After many years, presumably some 4 years, I am updating my website. It took 3 months for me to finalize a couple of designs to go with. Even this time I am not opting for a Content Publishing System. Just plain PHP and HTML. All updates are done manually. Hopefully in the later update, I will be using a CMS to manage the website. Currently I am considering Expression Engine and WordPress CMS kits. Will evaluate them first and finally decide if they meet my requirements or should I consider other CMS kits. Well, the first re-design I tried is http://rajesh-sundaram.com/v10 and then http://rajesh-sundaram.com/v12 and now I have finalized the v12 design. - Rajesh Sundaram

Interesting to read. Found in one of the IxDA discussion threads... The topic discusses a more precise and new explanation of User Experience. Read the PDF to understand it much better. http://mauvyrusset.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/theessentialcharacteristicsofux1.pdf - Rajesh

Just updated Firefox 3.5 and checked the usual website. One big difference noted is the rendering.. insanely FAST! Whewww!! thats cool. - Rajesh Sundaram

Online Meeting is a buzzword today. Why? it saves a lot of money and time. And it helps to deliver support instantly. Here is a no-nonsense UI flow which is simple and intuitive to schedule an online meeting quickly between the Presenter and the Participant. To explain in layman's terms imagine this scenario. John is a support engineer and works for a software company. Kathy is their customer and one day, she finds some issues with the software. She sends an email explaining the problem and John attends it. John finds it is a simple problem that arise out improper settings in their software. So he decides to instruct Kathy via Online Meeting. John opens the Online Meeting page and selects the "Instant Meeting" option. Instant Meeting is where you schedule a meeting for immediate participation. 1. In that page, John (Conductor) enters Kathy's (Participant) name and Email ID. 2. The system sends an Email to Kathy along with a URL and Key to participate in the meeting. 3

I was talking to Bharath on the other day, we discussed how simplistic UI's make a big impact for targeted users, and also about software that offers user-focused UIs . IOW - Software that changes or offers different types of UI that are suited for various types of usage. For example, who's usage revolves around collaboration, they may expect immediately accessible tools / links like "List of other users to whom this document is shared to", A status box showing who are viewing this document, who edits this document etc. . For people, who rely mostly on document writing, they expect tools/links like "Export to", "Spell Check", "Indexing", "Email to" etc Thinking on the same line, I re-designed (actually part re-design, part fine-tuning) the new UI of our Zoho Writer 2.0, which is immensely popular among Zoho Enthusiasts. Here is the first cut I arrived at. I re-done the tool-bar with new color and rounded corners. My idea is

For a long time, I was looking for a site / dealer who sells Intel DOT Station in India. Looks like ThinPC is a reseller for intel DOT Station. Here is there website link. Intel DOT Station, apart from its outdated PIII based hardware, seems to be a right fit for the Internet tasks. It can be used as a complimentary internet browsing computer at home. Even as a dedicated download machine! :-D Whats more, it is compact and even comes with network support and a standard CD Drive. :-D thats cool. Oh btw... the Intel DOT Station costs Rs.6000 (or) USD 125 only. For those who are interested in SPECS: Processor : Intel PIII (appx 900 mhz) RAM : 256 CRT : 14" Optical Drive : CD Hard Disk : 10 GB Keyboard with integrated trackpad. Speakers, Soundcard, USB and Ethernet built-in - Rajesh