User Experience for Mobile and Desktops

 The Nokia Lumia 730 Dual SIM Many of you must have read how good the Nokia 730 Dual SIM is. Yes! the phone is phenomenal. It has got everything and can satisfy a selfie-youth, to a technologist, to a casual user. The Nokia 730 Dual SIM, has the right hardware, excellent camera in front and back, the sexy looks that beats the high-end lumia phones to dust. The touch response and the clear black OLED display gets a special mention. I was feeling high, when I purchased my Nokia Lumia 730 Dual SIM from a Nokia Store in HSR Layout, Bangalore,  The Windows Phone 8.1's user experience was top notch, despite the fact that Windows Phone requires a different learning curve compared to the Android OS. Things went well for a week. My niece was in love with the selfies and she shot some of her great selfies using Lumia 730. On the apps front, I did not feel any lack of apps either. There is an app for everything, but the sheer quantity is less compared to the android store. ...

Continuous Scroll is a great solution for those who are looking for alternatives for the standard pagination.  Now sometimes, one may come across a question - "Will implementing Continuous Scroll be helpful when the data is huge & dynamic?" The straightforward answer is NO! for certain cases. Continuous Scroll with Lazyloading is good. But for certain cases, it is advisable to implement some add-on measures or use the Pagination pattern. Let's consider an easy example. You are the network admin of a big enterprise whose 1000 employees have individual laptops. Imagine you are looking at a web user interface which shows the status of all active Laptops at any point of time. The whole UI gets refreshed every 5 mins. This means once is 5 mins, each record will refresh with a new value. Assume you are looking at 563-rd information, which shows IP 192.168.5.22 is online and active. It also belongs to the user called JOHN DOE and it is running some services like Apa...

Was totally mood out, when I saw the name AIR INDIA in my flight tickets. This was the first time I flew on Air India flight. Never heard good reviews about them so far. But what happened later changed my perception greatly, but not fully. Pros 1. The flights departed on time, and arrived on-time. 2. The flights were clean, though not exceptional. 3. Refreshments (Tea Coffee Water Cookies) were served, with acceptable quality. 4. Crew members were efficient. 5. If what I heard is true the captain said "We are 5 mins ahead of our scheduled landing". Really that fast?? Cons 1. Old ladies in the name of crew members is an eye-sore compared to SpiceJet and Others. 2. Saw "Veg Hindu Meal" marked on my ticket, but was not given. Not sure if thats usual practice or some blunder from my travel desk. 3. There were TV screens in each seats, and none of them were working. 4.  The whole ambience looked dull. Contrary to popular belief Air India is not bad, it ...

General Visa interview is now split into two processes. 1. OFC - On a separate day 2. Consulate Interview - On a separate day OFC This is where you visit the VFS office to scan your fingerprints, confirm your identity to take photos. The OFC office is now moved to GAWRA GRAND building. You can easily locate this building in the GOOGLE MAPS as well. It is in the off lane on the same Consulate road. When entering from the Main road, take left and reach the dead end to get into this building. Procedure 1. Take the following 3 documents only. The DS-160 printout Your Passport  Appointment letter.  Any other documents are unnecessary. Even the default 50mm x 50mm visa photos are not needed. 2. Reach GAWRA GRAND just 30 mins before your scheduled time. It is absolutely unnecessary to reach there hours before. At the gate the security will display the time slot being serviced for your reference. 3. No VISA interview at GAWRA GRAND. So come relaxed. Dressing coul...

Recently my Brother In Law purchased a nice 42" Smart TV for his home. Right from day one, he was not happy with the performance of his TV's audio capabilities. I took a look at it, and found that the speakers are pointed downwards, instead of facing the viewers. Most LCD TVs follow this setup, so that it creates a sleet look. Functional compromise, for the sake of look and feel. Improving the LCD TV Sound quality through Equaliser   Tweaking the Equalizer settings did not help much in our case. The audio response was more or less flat, and the bass was virtualy non-existent and the vocals are flat, and hi-frequency is not satisfactory. Improving the LCD TV sound quality through Computer speakers We found that there was a Headphone-out plug behind the TV. Unfortunately most LCD/LED TVs doesnot provide you a simple RCA Audio out. Not sure if that was intentional, but to cut costs, we found that to be a fundamental flaw.   So we bought a 5.1 Computer speake...

If you are trying your hands-on in Git for Windows, then the very first thing you should do is - Install Git in your Windows Machine - Make sure you select the options to display "Git GUI here" and "Git Bash here" during the setup - Once it is all done and installed, you may need to generate SSH Keys. No SSH tool in Windows 7 Windows doesnot comes with SSH key generator. So do not try any commands in the windows terminal/command prompt. Git has it! Git comes with its very own SSH KEYGEN, so you need not download any other key generators. The keygen can be accessed from the Git command prompt, called as GIT BASH. It is very similar to windows command prompt or Linux/Mac terminal windows. Using PuTTY? Some of you might try PuTTY Gen, but as far I have seen, the file is not accepted properly in Git repo where you try to manage your SSH keys. So it is always best to use Git's very own SSH Keygen tool. Generating the SSH Key: Open up a fresh empty...

(Disclaimer : I am a former employee of Zoho Corp (AdventNet). The views expressed below are my professional opinion as a UX Designer and not as a former employee.)  The recent discussion in Zoho CRM's linked in page revealed a niche error which is mostly overlooked in today's web application development life cycle. While most communications happen via Email, Social Apps etc, many businesses still use a lot of printing as part of their daily work. For some, printing is the lifeline. Recently Zoho CRM rolled out a major  update which altered the font sizes and layout in one of their CRM module. While the intention was said to deliver a better UI and experience, it backfired for one of their long term customers, who became unhappy with the way the reports got printed. Looks like the print layout was not good, is imperfect with mismatched font sizes, and as per his opinion - he feels the new print layout is forcing him to go for hand-written tickets. After filing the supp...