Think Beyond!!

• Usability Analysis -piLogics
  

Usability Study based on a few important Usability Guidelines was carried on a website of newly launched startup PILOGICS, pune. PILOGICs is started by a few software engineers working with various organizations in Pune. As this is a startup and needs to expand a lot, Usability Evaluation of the website from time to time is very much advisable so as to capture the business as well as make sure that no shortcomings become an excuse for loss of revenues or business.

A short Usability Report Report [PDF]

** Note : This report is not to be reproduced or copied. This report is a study project and is not meant to offend the interest of any individual or organization.

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• Ethical Design or Designer’s dilemma

Copying is easy but unethical? Internet has provided a reach to anyone everyone of anything, everything. Open source environment have created much better scenario so that plagiarism remains no more a concern to the society. Another thing that can be done is to standardize a few things. One such nuisance can be observed with website designs here in order to provide a better solution to the customers Web designers end up to copy things. In the name of user-friendliness the websites are being copied from page to page, layout to layout and navigation style to style. One might say this is designer’s dilemma to provide such a solution to satisfy the customer’s needs. But again this compromises with the ethics. Usability.gov provides a few good guidelines in order to make a website user friendly and focuses on various aspects of making things easier. Let’s quote this issue with a few examples.

www.google.com and www.guruji.com or www.riya.com

The purpose of this website is bit different but the layouts and the designs are almost same and of course GOOGLE was the first to bring in this simplistic design.

Another most important example of this is,

NYTIMES , the american daily and Hindustantimes, TOI ,the well known Indian dailies.

 

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• Human Behavior and Livelihood - A study about how human psychology changes with a social happening.

An example of how a small social event affects the mindset of common man ending at the cost of livelihoods of a group of people serving the society. Undoubtedly Indian Cricket has affected the Indian mindset since a long time. On a passionate side, Cricket has been considered as Religion in this country. Indian vicotries mark a level of joyous and enjoyable environment all round the country and even a single defeat brought out heavy protest and mass agitation, burning effigies and attacking players residences.

But between all these so many emotions where a poor man lands up who is earning through this sport but not through victories and defeats of Indian team.
This study unveils a brutal scene at homes of roadside bat makers of Pune. On 14th March 2007, vacations in most of the schools in Pune started. Kids were free and relaxed buying the wooden bats and a good crowd were seen local grounds. The same time Cricket World Cup 2007 was going on and all around India and cricket playing nation, a flavor of Passion, Victory, Color Blue could be easily seen. From 14 to 19 the roadside bat makers sold of their first stock of bat and had already brought enough stock of WOOD to satisfy the needs for next coming month’s bat buyers. On 19th India lost to Bangladesh and local grounds were scantily filled up. And how does this psychology affects the normal roadside business. People took a u-turn and found out some other sources of entertainment barring cricket as the prime choice. Kids chose skating and dancing as their favorite pastime and those cricket bats which were meant to be sold out in a month’s time are still lying.
Vishnu, one of the batmakers had bought extra wood from a nearby village Sangli so that enough number of bats can be carved out to satisfy the need for a month or two (at least till the World Cup ends). Now he is facing a loss of 30Rs per bat and have 200 bats already lying along with the wooden logs bought for making around 2000 bats. Psychology of cricket fans affected the business so heavily that these bat makers have no other resort but to sell off their remaining wood at cheaper rates to low class furniture makers.

A game affecting the routine and mindset of people so much that they have diverted themselves to Tourism, Painting/Sketching, Films and Window shopping in Malls as their pastime have in turn affected the livelihood of this poor section of the society. So an analysis is strongly required to save such a class of society who have nothing SECURED.

An analysis and a support can save many lives. The victims of such a situation either turns up to become criminals and indulge themselves into crime like Thefts etc or end up begging at the Traffic Signals.

This study also alarms the PRODUCT DEVELOPERs to carry out an risk analysis and market research before coming with any product in the market. Society’s behavior might change any moment any time bringing heavy losses to the organization or a group or an individual.

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• Child Psychology and Interaction with outer world.

As Dr Dinesh Katre well said in his artice about his Child doing so many indifferent things differently and quoted “‘H’ in HCI is far too complex than ‘C’ “

Referring to a Child’s Psychology of understanding things around and that too mostly on the basis of color he identifies.

The colors or the visuals are the main source of understanding a Child Psychology. Its very much true that Child’s tender memory helps them to identify and co-relate between the real things and the artificial. This tender memory stores the visuals very similar to adults but there is no interpretation of the things. Just an observation gets stored in the Child’s mind and there from he evaluates the outer world.

My nephew (Gomzy) is 4 years old and when he was taken to a Toy’s Shop full of fancy cars, trucks, automatic car gears, toytrains, soft toys, remote-controlled vehicles. But what his tender memory selected was an auto-rickshaw which he daily sees running on the roads.

Such examples are minor but very true as kids like Gomzy are very specific when they see colors and visual effects around. That is the reason Children are crazy gamers and better gamers than an adult. Because on every single click or on every Mouse movement, the feel and realize that some action is being taken by the character on screen.

Gomzy lives in pune and has never seen BROWN Colored mountains. Whenever he is asked to color already outline drawn mountains, he picks up the GREEN color and fill them. So it all about Psychology of Child’s brain which works.

A very beautiful example of this is mentioned by Dr. Dinesh Katre when he refers to an incident when his child drawing the cricket stumps inverted. Read