How good is a camera phone?

I posses a point and shoot Sony Cybershot DSC-P72 camera using which I have been taking photographs for the past 5 years. Not that I’m absolutely happy with the outcome of the camera but as I don’t have a budget set apart for buying a better camera I’m forced to be content with what I shoot as of now. The camera has a very basic set of features which I can play with and the lens is only good enough for a point and shoot. To keep myself happy I concentrate more on interesting compositions, lighting and of course the subject and I think I have been quite successful with that.

As a person who is not even that happy with a cybershot I have never understood the need of a camera on my mobile phone which comes with even lesser features. When I recently bought a phone a camera hadn’t even featured in the priority features I was looking for. But the other day I happened to look out of the window of my office building and saw an interesting sight on the parking lot below. A tiny Reva sandwiched in between two giants; A Tata Safari and a Toyota Innova. The symmetry in which they were parked and also the giants in black color made it look so interesting and unaffordable to miss out uncaptured. For a minute I felt so bad that I didn’t have my camera with me but I quickly remembered my newly acquired E51, pulled it out and shot the sight. Of course the quality of the picture was low but I was happy that I didn’t let the interesting sight go uncaptured. And now I know what’s the true use case of a mobile phone camera.

Annoying Stickies

My friend says

I think it is easy to think of an idea for a product, but harder to materialise it. The hardest bit is to have great idea and come up with a product design that is usable. But usability does not stop just there. Even the tiniest of the problem could annoy your user. Take for e.g. I get really annoyed at the stickies that come with my new purchases.

I bought a fridge recently. An expensive, top quality, super cool (really), which comes with a mini manual stuck on its door. After a month or so, you get used to it and it is the time to unwrap the protective cellophane and get rid of the ugly stickers. Who would want to drive with an L board after they get the license. Anyway, some of them come off clean, but others wont. That becomes a problem to clean. I tried cleaning with all sorts of cleaning agents, but no luck. I realised I should have let the sticker be there, but its too late now.

Not just the manufacturers, even the sellers add to the problem. I bought a water bottle, nothing fancy, but the super market have to have its mark on it, guess what Buy 1 Get 1 Free sticker. I tried to remove it, it does not come off clean. Now it looks horrible. I just wish all stickers are made to be easily peeled off.

I also experience stickies on my satellite fed TV shows. TATA Sky, to protect from piracy adds an 8 digit number on the screen at random positions at random times. Really annoying.

Shower of Blessings

How many times you have opened the bath shower mixer tap not realizing that the mixer is set to the shower and accidentally got wet? Many a times I guess. But have you ever realized that it’s the bad design of the tap which has made you wet and not coz of someone’s mistake of forgetting to reset the mixer?

Design is problem solving. Tools were invented to solve some basic problems in life but later on the tools introduced another set of problems coz of the way it was made and used. So even though the primary problem was solved the secondary problems remained and most of the time was taken for granted by the users. The great example for this is computers. Computers were made to make many of the human tasks easy but it created a new problem for the humans to figure out how to use it. A good product design should not only solve the basic problem but also make sure the product doesn’t introduce any secondary problem. In the mixer tap case, the basic problem was solved by a single tap which took care of water supply to both the filler and the shower. But it created a new problem of people forgetting to reset the diverter to the filler after the shower usage which accidentally made other people wet.

The second generation mixer taps took care of this problem by separating the two functions. The water supply to the filler became the primary function of the tap and the shower was initiated by introducing a separate valve when pulled diverted water to the shower. On closing the main valves the shower valve got reset automatically. This was a gradual improvement from the classic design and it solved the problem to an extent. But the possibility of the shower valve being initiated before opening the main valves still had its purpose lost.

I recently came across this smart and minimalistic designed shower mixer which has a push button diverter which actually solves the “accidentally wet” problem. When the tap is opened, it’s always the filler which is initiated first and the push button acts as a diverter which switches from filler to shower and back on every push. When the tap is closed the button has no function i.e. when the tap is closed, you push the button and then open the tap it’s the filler which is initiated and not the shower.

The only issue I found with this kind of behavior is that the user might not figure out how the tap functions the very first time; it’s not intuitive enough. He might push the button and then open the tap and wonder why it’s always the filler and not the shower which is initiated. He might end up asking someone about it and feel silly after getting to know how it works. No product should ever make a user feel silly by making it tough for him find out the very basic function; however smart the design is. It’s ok if he doesn’t find out the advanced features; he wouldn’t mind taking help to figure them out.

Mark as what?

Google Reader is my favorite rss reader coz its easy and fun to use and of course the sharing feature. It has a a very original and smart UI which shows the feed items as a stream of stories and I can navigate through them using J & K keys. I love it. However there is a small glitch.

The interaction of the UI is such a way that a story is marked read as soon as you mouse over on it in the Expanded view and when you click on a title in the List view. And now if you want to mark a story as unread, finding the option option is not all that easy… Well let me say you will never find it.

The interaction here is a little tricky. As soon as the story is marked read it shows the status as a check box way below the story item.



Most probably you would want to mark a story as unread when you are half way through it and so you would not scroll down to the end of the item. Now even if you find it at the end of the article, its not straight forward. It says “Mark as read” which leaves the user confused. The user wont get the check box funda right at this point. Also if you look at the other options on the same bottom bar “Add Star” and “Share” have straight forward call to action, a prominent way of displaying the status by changing colors of the icons when they toggle. The “Mark as Read” is also meant to work in the same fashion, just to keep a consistent interaction, but it doesn’t work well.



I would say the best way to show the option should be way on top next to the story title and the button should toggle and the label should change according to the read status of the story.

Hold it You Stupid

I was suprised to meet my friend at the bar the other day coz he had told me that he stopped drinking

Me: Hey, how come you here? Are you back to drinking?

Friend: Yes, am just pissed at the Pepsi adverts.

Me: Are you talking about the Youngistan ads?

Friend: Yes, the one where the dude gets to be with the girl with his Pepsi drinking skills. These adverts brain wash me whenever they get an opportuinity.

Me: What about it?

Friend: All that is fine, but the part that irritates me is, the way the guy holds the can.

Me: You mean the 2 fingers closed? The Yo way?

Friend: By evolution or god's wish, we have 5 fingers. Because of laws of physics, a Cola Can often can be slippery. More the fingers you use to hold, the better. There is nothing cool about being a stupid.

Me: Alright, more beer?

User experience and beer just don't go together

Where are you? Should be a thing of the past

The other day i was walking aimlessly in the forum mall having nothing much to do. I was hoping to meet some one I know there so that I can kill some time talking to them. Also I was not very interested in a regular time pass conversation, but was more in a mood to discuss technology.

I wished if there was a barcamp social network site on my mobile phone which showed me if any of the barcampers are around wandering like me. I decided to give it some thought. My idea could be achieved in two ways. It could just be a status update on the user profile "I'm at forum and have nothing to do", and me seeing it. The other way could be the phone finding my location and showing it next to my name, so that I don't have to update my status all the time. At the same time it should not show up when I'm with my girl friend.

Say I'm at barcamp and I have no idea if my friend ashwin has reached the venue coz I need to get my comp connection to the wifi. Ashwin is the regular wifi trouble shooter at bangalore barcamps. I look at my phone and it says ashwin is at the venue and I go in search of him. But when ashwin is at home I should not have an idea where he is unless he decides to broadcast that info. But for now I would be happy if it can broadcast specific public places or gatherings like barcamp, conferences or concerts. May be otherwise it can just show my city info.

The mashup program which I'm talking about, may be should use Google Maps with My location which can find my current approximate location using the information broadcasted from cell towers. Upcoming could be used to find out if any event is taking place at my location. May be some other directory could share the information about public places like malls and cinemas. Some kind of a user generated info directly into the program could be also allowed. Like if the map is showing my current location as silk board junction, I should be able to tell the program that's where my office is. Information gathered from all these sources would make up a meaningful info which could help in broadcasting where am I at the moment. It could also send out a Tweet when my location changes.

Am I making sense? Or am I dreaming too much. Anyways I have decided to buy a new phone and am constantly in search of programs which could broadcast my location without using GPS. Loki is one service which is currently coming close to my wish.

Why is Mac beautiful?

As my friend has also become an usability enthusiast I was asking him about his views on the effectiveness of using different form elements on web forms. We had a nice talk over it and after some time the talk drifted towards another interesting topic

......

Friend: see if you can fit your requirement in this, and implement it, easy to use patterns http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/index.php

Me: yahoo is so helpful. It will be a shame if they get sold to MS

Friend: no but still I do not think they are worth 40bn and all that’s overrated. Even MS is helpful in some ways

Me: I’m not saying MS is not helpful but for the web culture yahoo is way better than MS

Friend: yes, for web yahoo is doing more. MS is not doing much in internet. may be they do not care

Me: ya they don’t care. or they are arrogant

Friend: I don’t think they are arrogant

Me: I don’t know what new they have done in their new hotmail

Friend: I am comparing Mac with windows I would say MAC is arrogant and they have to be like that to be beautiful

Me: ya windows is arrogant as in they think the world loves them and will use anything they make. yahoo cant think like that; to an extent Google can

Friend: problem with windows is it is such a huge mess i.e. if you call that a mess

Me: but I seriously don’t know how they can keep that huge ass OS development intact without making it a mess with all those vendors mostly Indian. is apple outsourcing their OS development?

Friend: making windows, beautiful like Mac will be like saying India shining

Me: if so they have some serious quality control in place

Friend: Mac is not outsourcing anything

Me: hmm

Friend: Mac is completely controlled by Apple. So it is beautiful and works for many

Me: just one example, in outlook if u want to mark a mail as spam u right click on it and it will ask u four questions which will take my half an hour brain process time and a friend's help

Friend: :) use Google mail

Me: the same Microsoft has made entourage for Mac which has just one button to mark as spam. so isn’t that arrogance

Friend: no not really

Me: apple has restrictions I know for the level of offering options for the users

Friend: see windows traditionally has been a whore. it has to be like that for the windows people to love it. Mac on the other hand is like aiswarya rai; only abhishek gets to f*** her. So who is making many happy? The whore is. Hence windows is popular

Me: I’m speechless, that was one hell of an analogy

Friend: f*** as in, doing all sorts of hardware and software hacks

Me: hmm

Friend: I have this Mac mini on my desk. I have 1GB on it. i also bought 2GB ram separately from an online site; not apple. I am still kind of 2 minded whether to open it or not. there is no screw to open it; I have to use putty knife. yes, the other argument is, let apple handle the RAM upgrades anyway. you get the point?

Me: yes that’s how they keep it beautiful

Friend: yes

Me: won’t let others to finger it

Friend: exactly we cannot say its arrogance its protection of their property

......

Phew

What is 37 Signals?

On a recent blog post on Signal vs. Noise Jason encapsulated what 37 Signals is all about in a slightly long one liner.

... "Self-funded small business that encourages people to stay away from the VCs, says you don’t need to live in San Francisco to be successful, suggests that charging for your products is a good thing, espouses the advantages of small teams, applauds shorter work weeks with more reasonable hours, rejects the notion of traditional ‘seriousness business stuff,’ and believes keeping it simple is the way to success"

Well I would love to work for a company like that...

Usability & Popularity

My Friend says...

It never ends to amaze me how complicated a natural language is, and yet functional.

It gave me a thought that the language popularity has got definitely something to do with its usability.

From the few languages that I know to read and write, I ranked them in the order of highly usable as English, Hindi and Tamil. To give you an example, think of how English uses its upper and lowercase letters effectively to begin a sentence. How Hindi has different characters for different sounds -- I assume pronunciation is never a problem. Analysing languages and ranking them will only start off a political debate, which is not my intention here.

I am not going to list why I think Hindi is so good when it is written or why Tamil is good to write poetry or why I think English has best bit of everything to be the real winner. "Why?" Why, because I don't have a list and I do not have an authority to speak for any language. This is only an attempt to emphasise why usability is important for any tools' success

My friend is proud that he speaks English

Gtalk chatback is scary and painful

Someone clicked on the Gtalk Chatback badge on the right side of this page the other day and as expected it opened the GTalk desktop chat window on my machine asking me to click on a scary looking URL. The URL was so long that it looked very malicious to me and I didn’t want to click on it. Also it didn’t give me any info that who was trying to chat with me. An invite one liner would have helped.

After scrutinizing the URL for a couple of minutes I gained some courage and clicked on it to open a web page which told me that I need to join a conversation and for that I need to click on the join button below. I did that too. Then it opened the GTalk gadget on another browser window with a new guest conversation along with another version of the already open GTalk desktop chat windows. Confused? Even I was. I had really liked the idea of a chat program having a web badge but there are serious flaws in the implementation and hence the experience sucks.

I don’t know if this is the drawback of the new age web services exposing their APIs for the community to build on them. Here the height of stupidity is that the same organization which built the original application is using its API to create two more separate versions which have different feature sets. Good that I hadn’t logged into the Gmail version. Otherwise my desktop would have got flooded with chat window replicas.

I’m OK with the idea of having multiple version of Google Talk which allows me to use it in different circumstances. But they should have taken care of the scenario when multiple instances of Gtalk are online at the same time. Eg. If I’m online on the desktop version and the web version at the same time, the desktop version should take precedence over the web version. Ie; If I start the chat on the web version by clicking on a contact the desktop chat window should be opened. Only in the absence of the desktop version should a web chat window be initialized. So in the gadget’s case the invitation and the guest chat would have happened in the same chat window.

It’s a great idea lost in translation