Utopian User Experience

“A Complete User Experience”

A clause so common that I barely these words now on the web. But complete user experience – hell not yet. Not even the “GOD of UX” has come up with the complete user experience yet.

1. Experience is for the five (may be six) senses.
2. Now we have conquered the sight and the hearing.
3. Smell, Taste, Feel and the “sixth sense” still pretty much remains to be dealt with.

Just like speakers, we could have “smellers” or “tasters” or whatever those things could be called with some sort of volume control. I am sure all the cookery sites would get the boost then.

I have a dream

weakness: “I am the perfectionist who can’t get sleep if things are slightly out of order”

strength: “I always think outside the box”

hobby: “I read all those boring business magazines”

dream: “To be the CEO of an MNC”

Result: Welcome to this big MNC as a Management Trainee.

The above lines pretty much defines “education” in a lot of places. Lets see what the economic slowdown do!

P.S. Hugh McLeod has gone on an absolute killing spree. He put some 20 odd cartoons on Gaping Void yesterday.

Back to the future

Stop blaming the kids!!!

Kids and video search

Read about some kid trends these days on RWW

Imagine a whole generation of kids growing up and learning about the world through YouTube. In the first half of the 20th century, people grew up reading books and newspapers. Then there was a generation that grew up on movies and television. The last shift was to the Internet. And now web video is creating yet another generation.

Kids no longer learn about the world by reading text. Like the television generation, they are absorbing the world through their visual sense. But there is a big difference. Television was programmed and inflexible. YouTube is completely micro-chunked and on demand. Kids can search for what they need anytime. This is different, and powerful.

True, the current model of YouTube is still raw and still skewed to entertainment. But imagine online video 5 years from now, geared to kids, where entertainment, games, education, travel — everything for kids — is mixed and delivered via searchable channels. This would be a big change on the Internet and in the world. Just as we no longer think twice about Googling, kids of the future will be consuming huge volumes of information via video.

Now this is quite an interesting phenomena. The text giving way to the visual stories. Are we looking at producing more content on this direction now? Is it really possible to create so much of video content so easily as making text content? If anyone know of such a thing happening, please do inform me.

If one solution is to sit in front of a camera and talk your heart out, that definitely is not a go ahead. We all know about reading speeds and fast forward reading. Video once scrolled is information lost completely. I can lose quite a lot of information by scrolling here and there and “scanning the text” is essentially a lot easier.

Lets wait and see where this leads to!

Future is uncertain. Dark Humor again

The present seems to fade away all ideas of future. I suspect no Sci Fi movie could succeed today. Again, Hollywood represents US and Bollywood represents Bombay (well not India completely). So, the movie cannot really represent the thinking of the masses. There seems to be a lot of difference in the thoughts of future – not seen much in the past.

Can you predict the future

I have a solution. Take it back to the palmistry days. Start looking at your lines. Make sense out of it. Look at the stars. Start wondering. Go back where to once belonged!

Get Back!

Internet and Globalization – a paradox?

A lot of funny, crazy and interesting things happening around these days.

Work as usual is the most blizzare of all. Internet medium, web development, advertising, branding and a sheer inexperience in all these concepts do call in for desperate means. ‘Web’ persons and ‘ad’ persons with differences in opinions; ‘UI’ and ‘creative’ with differences in opinions; ‘Content Writers’ and ‘Copy writers’ with differences in opinion; hell the ‘tea’ persons and ‘coffee’ persons could have differences in opinions. Looks like the whole world revolves around differences in opinions. Are we gazing at a whole new paradigm shift over here with every tom, dick and harry wanting to move the online way?

I think we could start off with a whole new breed of people down here. Yesterday a colleague of mine was tripping on the concept of pure human breeds becoming the ‘in thing’ in say a hundred and fifty years from now. Gone are the days when a ‘Half mallu – Half gujju’ or a ‘Half sindhi – Half telugu’ used to amaze people. Good old down to earth mumbaikars being emotional over their South African and Australian expat girlfriends / boyfriends seems to have take Globalization to a whole new level in itself. So a pure ‘Tam Bram’ in a 150 years from now could actually just be a thing to watch out for.

Looking at this concept above, we need not wait for a 150 long years to trip on the ‘Once upon a time pure Web person’ or a ‘Once upon a time pure Ad person’. Online baby – it fucks you up! So grow up! Keep quiet and accept the facts. Your ’scenes’ might just be ‘less’ in the days to come (some chutney lingo to the uninitiated).

Wait! Did I just say Globalization some time back? Did we all not trip somewhere in the late 90s (ya, i was a little school boy then wanting to go to America) that the internet and ‘computers’ will change the world? Did we all not watch Arnold movies where our hero beat the shit out of bad ass aliens disturbing the peace of the Globalized world with his big ass guns, coolers, and bombs he keeps in his back pocket! Forget for now that this Globalized world usually revolved around some buildings, statues and bridges around New York or California! Still, the very internet which is supposed to take globalization to the next level is fighting over their local egos – ‘web’ vs. ‘ad’ and ‘UI’ vs. ‘creative’!

Something is weird! Serious weird! Should I just dial up a super hero – someone like Captain Planet to tell these kids to chill out! Or even a Shaktiman who comes spinning down through these crazy internet browsers and give you a speech about respecting elders, avoiding jaywalking and to tell these kids to chill out! I have already kept my “Sorry Shaktiman” speech ready!