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.

When I first stepped into Bangalore, there was this sea of change I had to experience to start a whole new routine. Like any other moving out of the city situation, I had to leave behind quite a few things, which I wasn’t too happy about. Luckily, work kept me engaged and I didn’t have much time to wander around on the inside. Balu was the inspiration behind all the running, and Palit and Ritesh for all the ‘nautanki’. Valentino (the Bangalore version of the NID shack) felt like home to an extent.

Anyway, I finally realized what it takes to get down to ‘do’ things. I can’t believe I lived near the beach for over 20 years and didn’t realize the beauty of it; I should’ve literally ran my ass off when I was there! Unfortunately laziness worked in my favour. Anyway, getting introduced to few Team Asha folks probably did it’s share of the trick.

Today was a train wreck. It started off as the most innocent Monday (in office) that ever was, only till lunch to find out that I haven’t pushed my self enough to come to a concrete conclusion to what I was supposed to deliver. It’s one of those moments when I felt everything around me froze (more like bullet time, only that the bullet is traveling ever so slowly from one end of my skull to the other!)… But the best part about this is the striking similarity to the game. All totally Max Payne‘ish. The falling, all the red around me, the dream sequences, everything. I found out that it was about choosing the right weapon. Molotov Cocktail over some cheesy Uzi. The rest is about the next 4 days, and this week will conquer a new level in the game. And once I’ve chosen them, there’s nothing else left expect to ‘do’. It’s all a game anyway, isn’t it?

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.

I was thinking about this for quite some time, and decided I had to come up with my first visiting card. Tried a bunch of layouts and wasn’t too happy with any of them. Finally decided to make it a wee bit more valuable, and fixed one up with a 2D barcode (also known as a QR code) that scans to a business card for the mobile … if you happen to have a barcode reader (the Nokia E-series ships with one) scan it to check it out!

Been sitting at my desk for the past 4 hours and the power has shut down and restarted some 20 times already. I’m guessing its probably due to the following reasons.

- Election golmaal
- Cost-cutting by HP Labs (recession, ah yes…)
- Some insanely brilliant mastermind with an ulterior motive like the guy in Office Space

It has been over 2 months now in Bangalore.. time is moving pretty fast and there’s always an absolute routine to follow which kind of makes life pretty monotonous. This post is going to talk about what I feel about work life in Bangalore, the food and the people, but I’m guessing it’s too early to get a clear opinion on them. But I’m doing this anyway… so here goes! Office life as I would like to call it, irrespective of the field of work ultimately involves a computer and thus ends up in a cubicle or a desk. I was under the the impression that at least design would involve sitting in an open field or by the beach and sketching ideas, concepts, listening to music (and of course working on a laptop multi-tasking among several social networks )… either way it helps me differentiate between what I would like to do and what I need to do!

I started doing things I missed out on in the last 4 years. I started walking a lot, to work mostly… Suddenly feels like that there are more trees, more sun and a lot more to breathe in! I also started running, and this time plan to stick to it. I’ve completed 12 kilometers as of now (ran only twice) but I’m sure I’ll be writing about a higher count soon. On the food front, I’ve checked out Sri Krishna Kafe (personally give it 7/10 due to decent food, but mostly losing out on ambience), Gramin (7/10), Hungry Panda (6/10), Take 5 (6/10), Casa Piccola (7/10)  and MTR (10/10… yes, they have the best food I’ve had so far)… and of course a few more which I will write about later. I’ve met a lot of interesting people here, other interns at work, co-workers, their friends… the count keeps increasing! Good people to work with and hang out… guessing it will shape my social life here soon.

There are two songs I’ve been listening to like crazy offlate, one is Life in Technicolor ii by Coldplay and Friday by Goldspot. Saw them on TV long back, but wasn’t able to get them… and since my project involves listening to a LOT of music, I could call it work too …

More later. Peace to all!

“Designers are meant to be loved, not to be understood.”

— Fabien Barral

It’s been little over a month now since I joined HP Labs, and I’m finding work interesting. It involves listening to a lot of music! Understanding music from an emotional perspective is very fascinating, coming across all those amazing apsects of a song I’ve never even bothered thinking about. I hope to learn as much as I can here, and gain some perspective on what I would like to do after say, a year.

During the first month, there was a workshop in collaboration with universities in UK and Europe, titled “Winter School on Interactive Technologies”. As an interaction design and HCI workshop, it focussed on trends and upcoming technologies from a design perspective, showcasing interesting projects going on in UK and Europe. It was a good opportunity to meet people there and learn about work abroad. The lectures were interesting and fun! (5 years back, I never knew I’d actually say anything even remotely close to this ) It was a two day workshop, the second half of the day consisting of bootcamps (hands-on sessions) on realizing concepts and prototyping. I worked with Prof. Alan Dix (Lancaster University) on a rather empowering topic, and we came up with some interesting insights (read more about it here). Alan has jotted down his experience in India too in his blog.

It was a great source of inspiration and it was well timed (beginning of my project)! Hope to attend more workshops in the future!

Finally started my internship for my last semester at NID at Hewlett-Packard Research Labs in bangalore. Working on a top secret interaction design project!