User Experience

What is User Experience? The phrase can be associated with any consumer product or service. You visit a hotel for a couple of days’ stay. How was your experience? You run into a restroom in an office building/in a restaurant for nature’s call. How was your experience? You feeling sick and visiting a doctor. How was your experience? (From registration, waiting, consultation, diagnosis, billing and the aftermath) You buy a latest model mobile phone or camera. How was your experience?

For Software, the phrase UX is becoming the new paradigm. Yesteryear’s definition of good looking UI does not hold good any more. UX is not about a great looking UI for your application. It is more about making sure the application works great too. What is ‘Great’? Everything. The success of providing a great User Experience with a Software application lies in details. The App has to be Easy on the eyes; Easy to Navigate; Easy to Learn and Easy to Use.

Let us analyse a story of a typical Software Application. Finance department of a retail giant, requires all the store managers in the chain to prepare and submit a monthly budget for the store to plan the financial needs of stores for every month. The CFO calls the CIO and tells him he needs the Budget App and will nominate a Point of Contact (POC) from the Finance department for all communications. CIO calls the Manager in-charge of ‘Applications for Store Managers’ and gives brief details of the request and the POC in Finance. After a plethora of meetings, discussions, reviews, approvals and demos, the software application finally gets installed for the store managers to access and prepare monthly budget.

The CFO calls CIO and thanks him and the two top guys congratulate each other and fix up a round of golf on green grass and an evening of cocktails to celebrate the success of the new system. The Grass is not always greener in the other side – The end users. By the time a Store Manager gets a printout of a monthly budget in the approved format, he would pretty much curse everyone in the world with particular attention to the programming team and the CFO. The store manager, of course, does not go to celebrate with cocktails. Instead, he hits the bar hard every night, during the budget week.

The moral of the story: The feedback for a software product/application has to be obtained from the end users of the App, who deals with the system at a transactional level day-in and day-out. Unfortunately, the voice of the customer is too feeble to reach up to the last programmer, who builds the system, due to several commercial, political and tactful reasons.

The paradigm is shifting and a lot of big software corporations are becoming user centric. There are focus groups set up for this thought process. The focus groups work relentlessly towards Usability Studies. The groups strive to represent the voice of the customer to the programmers. The Focus groups play the role of an end user and would not let an App out of the building if it fails to provide a greater UX. The report sent from the Focus Groups to the Programming Team will list the ‘Offences’ in the system, which will make the life of an end user very difficult, at least while they spent time with the system.

What do we all do herein programming community? It is really simple. There is a ton of literature available to read about UX. Also, by asking one simple question, we can change the way a system operates: “If I were to use the system for most of my work life, would I be comfortable?”

Ladies and gentlemen, the buzzword is: Intuitive. If the end user appreciates an application with the words - Intuitive and Slick, you can congratulate yourself for having built a great software application.

Honour killing! Really?

It has been months since I had read about the Judgement in Aarushi murder case. Even today, as I sit down to write this blog, I am extremely disturbed and worried.

An investigation based on the theory of ‘Honour killing’; A Judgement based on the theory of ‘Honour killing’, in the year of 2014. I agree that we are a third world country and technology & the facilities offered to (and the processes set up for) various government departments are way inferior compared to that of developed world. That should not necessarily dictate that the quality of thoughts, actions and expressions by these departments to be very inferior and downright unacceptable.

The UP police did kill Honour of a child; The Post-Mortem team did Honour killing; The CBI did Honour killing; The Forensic team did Honour killing; The media, both ‘Print’ and ‘Telecast’ did Honour killing; The Judgement did Honour killing; Above all, the people of this country did the biggest of Honour killing – reading and watching over several years and doing nothing about it;

It is so very convenient for everyone involved, to shamelessly do this, because Aarushi is not alive. It also is extremely convenient because they can sell this theory in India. What is worse, the public wants to read more and flourish on the cheap entertainment about a bad character here, an Honour killing there and swinging couples everywhere.

 By some miraculous divine intervention, if Aarushi were to be alive today, how many of these gentlemen/ladies have the moral courage to go and stand before her and say the things they have said about her openly to the entire nation. Aarushi would apply pepper spray on them because this is an attack on her character. And Aarushi would have every right to question their character.

If an investigative agency and a court of law can convict parents of a child on Honour killing theory and circumstantial evidences, what is the sentence against CBI for killing the Honour of a child (just by wild and shady imagination) with no evidence whatsoever?

By this post, we pray along with million others for the higher courts to restore the Honour of a murdered child. Truth must prevail!

Tamil Nadu Students and 2014 Parliamentary Elections

At the outset, I would like to declare the target audience for this write-up – Tamil Nadu students. Also, though the write-up can act as general guidelines on a student’s role in any elections, would like to restrict the conversation to 2014 parliamentary elections.

Worldwide, there are several examples when Student movements brought about astounding changes. The students of various colleges and institutions in Tamil Nadu have participated in rightful and just movements before; Very well know the effect of such protests.

The time has arrived again when the students have to act upon and exercise the power they rightfully own. VOTE! During the elections, it is the opportunity and duty of the Tamil Nadu students to vote right. Three simple guidelines:

1. Vote right.
2.  Influence everyone in the family, friends and the community to vote right.
3. Spread this message across the entire Tamil Nadu to bring about the change.

I am not a political advisor. I have said so several times in my earlier articles. However, if anyone has an uncertainty as to whom to vote, please read upon, for my thoughts:

What to do?
1.             All Daringly Must Knock out anti-Tamil Nadu forces
2.             All Dutifully Must Knead to decisive leadership
3.            All Dravidians (so to speak) Must Know the truth

Why to do?  Because,
1.            A national party has routed itself in the state
2.            Another national party has a comical coalition
3.            Permanent benefiters have more family issues to sort out

The student communities of the state of Tamil Nadu have a clear mandate for 2014 elections. Remember, we are electing representatives to protect the interests of Tamil Nadu. Please be prudent and prevail! Truth must triumph!

Author’s note:-

It is a deliberate attempt to delay this write-up and post 10 days prior to the elections. The author wants the message to be new and fresh in the minds of all – yet there has to be enough time to spread the message throughout the state.

It is a coincidence that the message goes out on the day of Tamil New year! Happy New year everyone! One Vote! One Leadership!

I have a dream!

Prologue: - Hi All, I had dreamt this write-up on 02nd day of April, 2014. Currently, we have a new Prime Minister in India. Nevertheless, my dreams are still very accurate and I hope and pray that my dreams will come true!

Dreams:-

I wanted to write this post and publish on the 01^st day of April. But then, I did not want this post to be read with the hint as an April fool’s joke, laughed at and as quickly dismissed from thoughts. I wanted to write this post as a collection of ‘Then There is…’

Since the writing goes on the 02^nd day of April, for a good reason, the post would be a collection of ‘Then there will be…’

Then there will be a Prime Minister who would appear on National Television and announce ‘I will not allow any farmer to commit suicide in our land. Farmers, who are watching, take my direct official telephone number and call me if such a thought ever crosses your mind. We will find the cause and eliminate the cause altogether. Trust me! Farmers are the heartbeat of India and I will not allow a farmer’s heartbeat to stop by suicide. Not under my watch!’

Then there will be a Prime Minister who would NOT want to leave a legacy as ‘I have done nothing wrong!’ Rather who would want to leave a legacy as ‘I have done everything Right’ and a stronger legacy as ‘I have not allowed anyone in the government to do anything wrong’

Then there will be a Prime Minister who would NOT allow a neighboring country to mass murder hundreds of thousands of innocent citizens in the name of war against terror. Then there will be a Prime Minister who would NOT allow the same neighboring country to kill Indian fishermen on a daily basis.

Then there will be a Prime Minister who would send a direct strong command, if needed military power, against a State government to force open the rightful River Water Supply to the neighboring state where thousands of farmers die year after year due to the illogical and completely opportunistic political system.

Then there will be an unpolluted political system in our country which will not blend the corruptive measure ‘Cash for Vote’ in any level of the democracy. Then there will be chief ministers of our states with the wholesome goal towards upliftment of the nation and people of the state’s only.

Then there will be authors who will not promote underage drinking and premarital sex in every book that they write to promote sales among what is called as ‘mass’ in the country. Then there will be media as a whole that understands ‘A country is as good as its press!’

Then there will be Police, Investigative and Judiciary systems that are mindful and actually understand the meaning of justice, dignity of justice and understand the know-hows as to whom, for what and by how the justice will be carried out.

Then there will be advanced and civilized society when foreign tourists would declare that our land is the safest in the world, for women. Then there will be a day when almost all billion plus Indians can stand up and say ‘I am proud to be an Indian’! Cheers J