Saturday, November 26, 2005
There was a seminar on Information Communication Technology recently at M.G. College, and my mom and DP attended. I helped DP with her presentation there, and in the process, learned something of the topic which I feel I should share.
ICT is another one of those interdisciplinary fields that I feel I can be passionate about. It’s about using technology for effective communication; the seminar dealt specifically with technology as a tool for learning, what you can do with it and its implications. I got a good description of the seminar from my mom (couldn’t attend because I still am driving myself to write a perfect SOP), but first I’d like to go off on a tangent, and share some thoughts on literature analysis that I’ve always had.
Literature appreciation, the kind that goes around in English departments out here, I’ve felt is most often fitting theories to your primary source. The theories themselves are assumptions made by generalizing a large number of texts, and there is nothing wrong with that: it follows the “hypothesize, theorize, correct” chain of scientific research. What is innately wrong though is that appreciation is about analyzing fiction, and that has an incredible level of dependence on the text in question. Fitting Freudian and Jungian themes into character’s drives and aspirations, and explaining them that way seems so incredibly pointless. DP explains this (although she admits its “invory tower research”) by saying that ultimately, since characters in books are based on real people, this appreciation is in effect a study of human life. It still seems an incredibly round-about way of going about it though 
The kind of appreciation I like, is linguistic analysis of texts. I’ve read a thesis by one of my mom’s friends done on God of Small Things. I really liked the way the analysis moved about to point to the effectivness of language. Which brings us back to… ICT.
One of the other problems I believe, with the so-called-experts of this field around here is that while they are up-to-date with the latest of theories, they don’t experiment with them. No controlled experiments around here, folks, just talking and making mountains of debate. Research should always be with a practical goal in mind! Or, it must be to further a definitely stated goal. And it should always, always be supported by valid experiments. This time around, as my main project, I plan to do some usabililty field testing with people and how they use authentication mechanisms. Let’s see how well I practice what I preach 
HCI and ICT seem to be really related fields, and I’d like to do a course in linguistics/communication effectivness/etc. too sometime.
Tags: HCI • language • literature
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Friday, November 25, 2005
I should have posted this sooner, but
Rashmi Sinha’s weblog is a gem of a find.
Tags: design • HCI
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Friday, November 25, 2005
Microsoft and Apple are recognized stalwarts in the HCI and design fields. Yet I’ve noticed they take a distinctly different approach when it comes to designing user interfaces. While both have usability guidelines for UI designers (Apple, Microsoft), they seem to have a distinctly different approach to UI design.
(Note: I am no expert on any of these, and neither am I well-versed in the guidelines I mentioned, nor have I ever used a Mac long). The difference is immediately noticeable when you look at their flagship OSs: Windows XP, while being rich and colorful out of the box, manages to come across as increasingly dumbed-down and staid. All applications look and feel exactly the same. The UI guidelines emphasize conformance more than they do solutions to problems. The good thing about this is that the user is constantly reassured, never does he have to learn another user-interface model. Learning curve for familiar applications is almost zero, and even for applications which do complex tasks like say, 3D Studio Max, menus and widgets remain the same.
Contrast with the Apple Mac OSX: the guidelines seem to serve as very broad directions to the UI developer. Individual applications are left free to come up with their user interfaces. Anyone who looked at a Mac though and contrasted it with an XP interface will be blown away first by the sheer aesthetics of the computer: it’s beautiful, and pleasing, and that certainly doesn’t hurt a user reward model. The important fact I’d like to stress though is that rather than conformance, creativity seems to have been given veto.
Is a learning curve for applications bad? Leave aside computers for a moment. Just imagine an average human being going through his life. He learns to manipulate electronics from as simple as a watch to as complex as well.. a computer ;-), but since we left that aside.. a cellphone. Every one of these devices, from a book, to your toilet flush, to a TV remote to anything has a distinct and different user interface. And we seem to grasp everything either intuitively or with a small learning curve. Every time I encounter a new tap design (and once, I had to push one button and twist it to get the thing going) I learn a new user-interface. While examples such as these might be an argument in favor of conformance, it does demonstrate the versatality of humans when it comes to exploring and understanding novel user interfaces. But, excellently designed user-interfaces - like say the Apple Ipod - is intuitively usable once the learning curve is done. It’s almost like riding a bicycle in some cases: you never forget. It’s a testament perhaps that the most loved music player for Windows ignores UI conformance completely.
How does all of this help my Mom who forgets how to browse every now and then just because I rearranged the order of icons on my desktop? Is non-conformance to any UI model the answer? Hardly. The balance struck by Microsoft (or at least, illustrated by their applications) seems to be incorrect however. Word doesn’t need such a confusing plethora of icons when it advertises itself as a word processor (They seem to have learnt that).
More intelligent and well-versed people than me have thought about this for long. (As an aside, when has that stopped me? :-D) But I’d always be a designer leaning a bit towards the creative end of the spectrum. If only because if ever I learn to design well (and perhaps break the UI model in the process) I can be quite sure my users will understand it, and love the UI for it.
Tags: design • HCI
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Thursday, November 24, 2005
I’ve been (and am) involved with two separate groups of people who think SMS is the biggest thing to hit advertizing, and the fastest way to make a buck. Interesting to think that SMS-ing (or text messaging) isn’t popular in the US at all: rather it seems to have taken off really well in the Asian countries, especially Japan, Singapore and the likes. But is such a model of advertizing, and any model of business based on it sustainable?
I ask this question because of the increasing saturation of the market: ringtones, wallpapers, chain messages, “SMS blah-blah to number” ads, and voting, responding, and even dating through SMS seems to be the in-thing now. It’s obvious that the next generation of computing will all be done on something small, and getting a jump-start on that medium is definitely a Good Thing. But is SMS itself a palpable medium of communication, let alone advertizing?
There is a soft limit on the medium: 160 characters: that’s on an average 30 words, and hardly two sentences. I was hardpressed once to find a good caption that fits into 15 characters. Besides, the World Has Moved On: while SMS and its cousins are increasingly suited for short pager-ish messages, mobile phones now are hardly Pager 2.0: even my Nokia phone has a camera and a photo gallery. Hell, it has an OS and a Python intepreter for it!
My predictions? Someone along the line is going to invent a way for fast, easy and intuitive text-input for mobile phones [My bet is on chord keyboards or gesture recognition, but shush, don’t tell anybody - I want to be that someone ;-)]. The next generation mobile device will have everything from video telephony to voice recognition, and people will communicate the way they do now… seeing, talking and listening to each other. Any advertising medium used will be far more immersive, and far more interactive.
So how does the current breed of SMS advertizers survive? Diversify, branch off, evolve and innovate.
Tags: chaff
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Saturday, November 19, 2005
I had a pretty interesting discussion with DP yesterday, and I should say a few words about it. I hereby proclaim myself an inexperienced expert on love, and warn that all my words should be taken with a grain of salt.
When you do fall in love with a person, as happens to around a guesstimate ten thousand people every day, it is interesting to analyze what happens to you. I’m not talking about testosterone weds oestrogen - they are important just superficially - what happens inside your crazy little head? What are you thinking, putting another person’s happiness before yourself? Why are you so infatuated, so bloody well in love with hir?
Since love is by definition crazy and inexplicable, I seek not to answer that question. Perhaps though, all of us are intrinsically very lonely people and we just need to love to get some sanity into our world. The issue on the table though is that if love happens once, and then is lost (death, indifference, or plain cruelty) can it happen again? Should it happen again?
DP remarks on the callous youth, and how every now and then, one or the other of her students seem to just so easily move on after being scorned or just breaking up and moving on to other people. Is that then what they had love? Can true love ever happen twice? Interestingly enough, she says yes to both those questions, so I find her position contradictory and yet infinitely understandable.
My uninteresting prose will now give way to Byron’s poetry:
In her first passion, a woman loves her lover,
in all the others all she loves is love.
I intepret those words (still remaining gender neutral) thusly: When you love the very first time, when you hear and see a person who you know deep down in your bones is just so right for you, when you think with your heart and soul and find happiness in being with that person, you find love. If you lose that love - that lover - you’re crushed and broken and despondent. But every time you see a candidate you seek in hir those qualities that you adored and worshipped and wished you had again.
That is, so to say, you love being loved… Again, and again.
Tags: musings
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Friday, November 11, 2005
Answering Neil’s Tag. My tastes are a lot eclectic, so that will show in the list to follow, and I’ll keep it short, to just 5 books
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The Spy Who Loved Me by Ian Fleming
The James Bond novel by Fleming, and just about the best book I’ve read to date (it ties with 2 below). It’s wonderfully different from other books by Fleming, and tells a spy-story from a very different perspective.
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The Adventures of Me and Martha Jane by S. J. R.
Erotica, but so wildly different from the other ones found on the net that I’m ashamed to call it that. This e-novel is thought provoking, insightful, and the best first-person coming-of-age story I’ve read to date.
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Temple of the Winds by Terry Goodkind
The best novel in a series that later degenerated into utter trash, this one holds out as one of the best books I’ve read. I adore its thoughts on love and sex, and how different and same they are
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Evolution by Stephen Baxter
The mega-saga of evolution on earth. It starts from the most degenerate of life forms and envisions a post-human society. Wonderful, thought-provoking book.
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Komarr by Lois McMaster Bujold
I’d rather recommend the whole series, with Miles Vorkosigan and the unique blend of action hero that he is, but Komarr and The Warrior’s Apprentice are especially amazing.
This was a hard list to make and is in no way representative of my reading. I’m so indiscriminate that I’ll have favorites in different genres… the first two or three books though should remain the same. After that, thousands of books vie for my attention
Tags: reading
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