Tiny URL

We often have very long URL and sending them to someone or remembering them is a sort of problem. TinyURL is here to the rescue. An example to show their working:

Turn this URL:

http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?ovi=1&mqma
p.x=300&mqmap.y=75&mapdata=%252bKZmeiIh6N%252bI
gpXRP3bylMaN0O4z8OOUkZWYe7NRH6ldDN96YFTIUmSH3Q6
OzE5XVqcuc5zb%252fY5wy1MZwTnT2pu%252bNMjOjsHjvN
lygTRMzqazPStrN%252f1YzA0oWEWLwkHdhVHeG9sG6cMrf
XNJKHY6fML4o6Nb0SeQm75ET9jAjKelrmqBCNta%252bsKC
9n8jslz%252fo188N4g3BvAJYuzx8J8r%252f1fPFWkPYg%
252bT9Su5KoQ9YpNSj%252bmo0h0aEK%252bofj3f6vCP

into this tinyURL:

http://tinyurl.com/6

Which one would you rather cut and paste into your browser? That's the power of TinyURL!

TinyURL is amazingly powerful, and as they say tiny is better, so go and explore this tiny thing.

Cheers!

Design Speak: Seminar on User Centered Design

To describe Design Speak, Annual Event @ NID in one word would be DISAPPOINTING. Theme of the seminar was User Centered Design (UCD). Seminar started with an introductory lecture from Dr. Eric Schaffer, CEO HFI. Absolutely no content in his talk and I found him to be a Jabberwocky! Same was true for all the speakers who followed. Though every speaker had exceptional profile but no one could justify the topic of the seminar and at the end of the day, Usability still remains a field which is not science and is just matter of common sense.

Anyways some very few points that I found useful in the seminar were:

• ISO process can make UCD more reliable and person independent.
• Times New Roman font was designed to compress characters and put more text in limited space.
• Verdana font was primarily designed for screen based interface.
• Minimize the load on the user on following counts - visual, intellect, and memory.
• The Design Process: Idenity Need -> Create brief -> Brainstorming -> Data Gathering -> Redesign Brief -> Conceptualize -> Validate Concepts -> Final Design
• Punctuations can be made bigger than normal text to attract attention.

These were the points from inital few lectures, after that I dozed off. Just on our way back, visited NIDUS, NID's Design Outlet, displays products made by NID graduates, and proffessors.. though touch expensive but very nice.

I hope, future seminar/workshops based on this theme would be more insightful. One such workshop is scheduled soon at Synapse. For details, click here.

Cheers!

Personal Note

technophobic takes a break from technology today and is uploaded with a rather personal note.

People,
Iam Celebrating

Because Iam 21 now,
Officially ready for Marriage!

EDIT (Feb 12, 2006): Yesterday's crap removed.

Cheers People!
-m0r0N

"Live LiFE and sTop ANalyzing iT."

rediff completes 10 years

rediff is 10 years old now, read this effusive message from the founder himself:

A message from Ajit Balakrishnan, Founder, rediff.com

Ten years ago, on a day like today when Bombay's mild winter was slowly sliding in, a small band of programmers, writers, designers, management specialists got together on a mission.

The mission was to create a platform for people to meet and interact. One that would rival the best in the world.

Ten years later the small original group has grown to include many other like-minded creative spirits.

The platform that we collaboratively created is admired in many countries of the world. Sophisticated investors value us highly; discerning digerati come visit us every morning.

The world admires our creative and independent spirit and expects great things from us.

The journey is just beginning.

Cheers!

egoSurf

egoSurf: ego surfing without the guilt

It was this tagline which took me to the website of egoSurf. egoSurf finds your blog ranking in Google. Its working is simple, you enter your name and your blogs web address. They search google and find links to your blog and thus, calculate your ego ranking. For more insight, visit their FAQ section or much better straight away head to egoSurf and calculate your blog ranking.

PS: I won't tell my egoRanking, way too low :(

Cheers!

Perception about HCI in India

It was during my research internship last year that I developed interest in the field of HCI. At that point of time, I found it to be very interesting, innovative and creative. But all of a sudden a lot many people from my college has ventured into this field, not because its creative, but they think HCI gives them the perfect platform to break away from the coding paradigm and still call themselves technocrats. This is kinda irritating (Iam not at all expert but still) because this attitude belittles the importance of this field.

Dr. Dinesh Katre, HCI guru echoes my concern and has written a superb article highlighting the above points in a very lucid manner.

People have a superficial belief that HCI does not require training or special skills (the minimum eligibility crierion is to be born as a human!). Many IT companies perceive that software usability process is a fad like ISO and CMM, which must be complied with because it is the current fashion in developed countries. Some are attracted to it because you can charge the customer more for fancy things like context study and affinity maps. Some feel that it is just a new terminology to be used while discussing user interfaces.

You get the feel where this article is heading, so anyone and everyone related to HCI should read this article and all those creeps who think HCI is just a fancy word, this article is a must for them.

Cheers!

Do you like flickr logo?

If you do like flickr logo, then unleashing to you flickr logo maker, which allows you to make your own personalised logo in flickr style. I made one for myself:

Cheers!

Paper Prototyping

Concentrate on paper work before the actual work!

This funda applies to design of interfaces as well and is called Paper Prototyping. Paper prototyping is a cheap and fast technique for rapid iterative design of user interfaces. Here are a few examples:

Paper prototype of typical forms-filling screen.



Paper prototype of a tabs-based design.

Testing hardware user interfaces: mockup of a kiosk.

[via Nielsen Norman Group]

Cheers!