“Here, take some.”

"Share, and share alike."

When I decided that I would get myself an Android, my friends suggested that I should either go for the Nexus One, the Evo 4G, or wait a while for Google’s new Gingerbread device (the then-rumored Nexus 2). I’d put in a lot of thought into this, and finally decided on the Droid. The Droid was Motorola’s flagship Android device which was a huge success in the US and pretty much saved the company from extinction. It wasn’t the latest model available at that time, but it definitely was a big hit and managed to stick around longer than expected (for almost a year). I followed the device eagerly for around 6-8 months, after which I set my eyes on its non-US counterpart, the Milestone. The Milestone was one of those gadgets that absolutely had to retail everywhere else in the world owing to its sibling’s success.

Motorola has always been a company known for its excellent but stubborn values. They rarely try out disruptive trends in innovation (as far as I know) and have always followed a path driven by the market. I remember this from the time the RAZR took the mobile world by storm. Flagship devices that ruled the industry has been the manufacturer’s stronghold for over a decade. The mobile unit of Motorola almost withered away few years ago. They chose the Android platform after, hoping that it would save the company from collapsing; which later became one of the best decisions they’d ever made. One might question the relevance of this introduction, for which I’ll jot down my two cents in the coming lines.

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She was just 2 weeks old. One of the new generation cyborgs, an upgrade, I could say. With so much energy, so much aspiration and the will to soar the silver skies, she walked up to me and opened her lips just to whisper “Stereo Love – Edward Maya”. Voice Over, she called it. I knew she was a cyborg even though she didn’t admit it. You know, just so that she could always keep her emotions in check, unlike me. The “firm” that made her has been trying to take over the world for over a decade now. Things get a little nasty at times, but at the end of the day people do look up to this firm for “inspiration”. I’m not sure if people should stop doing that, because this firm, in the name of design, embraces color, form, type and aesthetics… all at once; and it’s hard to find that these days.

It all ended inside a godforsaken Samsung washing machine. I tried to save her as soon as I knew what had happened… an uncanny resemblance to The Fountain‘s story. Things went a little too fast in the end. They even rigged her up with a tiny water sensing device as if she was an expat. If they wanted to know if she’d been swimming, why didn’t they make her intelligent enough so that she could protect herself when there was a flood? The only useful thing that I can do now is initiate a relentless quest to understand everything I possibly can about this firm and find out their world domination plans which is probably entangled in some misplaced sense of ethics. And try and change things.

Made these during my internship. We don’t see much of these happening in Indian UX firms. Is it the money? If time is money (as what most industries believe), what accounts for all the shitty products we make? Understanding, absorbing and addressing issues/opportunities probably calls for stepping away from timelines once in a while so that we can look back at our structured paths and learn how much of a bottleneck they can be.

My sister’s reminder on a sticky note. I miss these. Mobiles have changed the way we live. I think we ought to become more responsible in designing for the mobile. The things we think of now must not only be driven by people’s preferences, but also by emotional value.

I can comfortably say that Cocoa is one of the best UI platforms there is, owing to its standardized, beautiful and intuitive interface. Most Mac apps are built using this framework which makes them consistent. A clean and simple looking menu bar, for example, throughout all software is an almost welcome offering. I guess Windows sort of got it right till 98, after which a series of mishaps and unaccounted justifications led them to a not-so-friendly place in the world of User Experience. I’ve been a fan of Windows for 8 years, and it took me less than a week with OS X to wipe the past out.

Just to get even on all my Windows bashing in the last two years, I actually thought over instances where some of my favorite Mac apps don’t fare too well. Here’s a list, and I sincerely hope all you guys at Apple, Google, Ate Bits, Mozilla… hear these out and do something about it. After all, there’s always room for improvement!

Tweetie:
Tweetie is such an awesome app for managing my Twitter account. It even supports multiple accounts, conversations, image posting, URL shortening… just so many important features in a beautiful and crisp UI. Although there’s a very important function missing – Delete tweet. I don’t think I need to state why it’s necessary! Hope Tweetie 2 brings out this feature, and possibly a lot more.

Firefox:
What a fantastic browser – easily the best of them all (I should tell you that Safari is my one and only “Tumbler”/Chevy V8 Rig).. but it takes up too much memory. It’s insane. Guys at Mozilla seriously need to sort this out. Google’s Chrome is super fast with their process driven tabs, what’s happening here? The experience of browsing the web is lost with such a memory hog. Most of my RAM is consumed by Firefox when I have more than 5 tabs open. That just sucks.

Google:
Where on earth is Google Talk for Mac? Any plans, ever?!

Mac Finder:
Why isn’t there an option where I can save the window size/position? I know there are third party apps available (such as Afloat), but these are basics that shouldn’t be overlooked. And of course, ‘forgiveness forever’ control? Undo accidental copy/move? Mapping this intuitively?

iPhoto and iTunes:
Some serious work on the storage databases may help. They just eat up disk space like crazy. How about learning a thing or two from Picasa? Tagging in iTunes? Tune detection (like Face detection)?

Transmission:
A neat little client for torrents, although the process of verifying and building files after/during a download sucks, and even fails sometimes. I’ve lost GB’s of data during this process. How about a ‘state’ saving feature? It will kick ass!

There are more, but I guess I can live with them. I’m sure many of you feel that an app can do better when you’re actually using it. I encourage you to contribute to this list! If you have any app suggestions, ping me and I’ll feature in it in the next version of this post.

I found this in Egg Factory, a good brunch place on St. Mark’s Road in Bangalore. The mug had a lovely handle, offering a comfortable grip. It is one of the simplest ergonomic marvels I’ve come across lately, and is available for sale at some of the kitchenware/cutlery stores on Commercial Street.

I remember roaming around the streets of Madras not so long ago, only to find the phone number of P.James scrawled in every wall, advertising his magic show. Talk about this to any true Madrasi, and you will be surprised that most of them have seen it at least once in their lives. This is what I would like to call ‘on demand’. Not because Google steals the spotlight today; because of social simplicity. More on social simplicity later, I’ll have loads to talk about it in exactly 3 years from now. Till then, here’s Avik accessing a socially simple phonebook.

I experienced a very satisfying form of happiness today at work. Last month was quite hectic as it involved a lot of thinking and analyzing (conducted user research in a methodical and thorough manner). After all the analysis, the derivation of insights helped pave the way to what I learnt as/would like to call “the golden box” of design. The most important aspect of any design project I’ve learnt, the basis of design, encompasses one, and all of the guiding factors that help meet the desired ‘functionality plus novelty’ aspect that design is known to create. I’ve never experienced this in any of the design projects I’ve done before. Every following stage in the design process will heavily depend on this “golden box” as it clearly points out design opportunities that need to be addressed. It’s the magic I’ve been trying to understand all this time, and it’s finally here. There’s more I can write, but I’m going to wait a while before I can get it all together properly.