CoorgTrip

Make a Smilebox slideshow

New Product Design Opportunity

Here I am not talking about the software product but a machinery/mechanical product. (Areca skinning machine)

Let me give some background information before explaining the problem.

Arecanut (Betel Nut) is a commercial crop grown in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and some parts of North Eastern states of India and even in some other countries. It’s also commonly known as Adike (Kannada), Supari (Hindi), Pakku (Tamil). In spite of this being a commercial crop, all the processing part is still done manually at each stage. I will talk about the processing part some other time but to understand the problem or the product design opportunity, let me explain the process in brief. (Other part of this process also needs different products)

This Areca bunches are picked from the areca tree and then it is separated from the thick outer skin to get the areca nut which is inside. This is boiled in natural areca extract colour and then dried in sun for 6-7 days before selling it in whole sale market. Separating the areca nut from its skin is most tedious and time consuming task. Till date it’s mostly done by skilled labors and its becoming very hard to get people in to this job. So, if some can invent/design some kind of machinery product which can separate the Areca nut from its skin it would be great.

There have been some attempts (and even working machine) to do this job but it’s not very successful. Reason for this is there are various tricky requirements in this process and some really good designer and problem solving skill is required to make this product a success. (I am not taking away any credits from who have already made the first efforts on this)

Following are some points or requirements in short:

• The machine should be able to separate the Areca nut from its hard skin.
• This Areca will be in various sizes and machine should be able to handle this properly.
• These seeds will be soft, hard and very hard depending on the age of that seed. Machine should be able to determine this or at lease able to handle it well with out damaging the seed.
• Machine should be able to cut these seeds in to half. (this has to be in a particular angle)
• Machine should be able to cut at lest of 100 Kgs per day minimum.
• Machine should be easy to maintain and operate with minimum supervision.
• Machine should be able to run on electricity or any other alternative energy source like petrol/ diesel.

Some more photographs and existing practice of this areca process is available here.

Any entrepreneur minded designers listening to this interesting challenge?

Scene behind a sip of coffee

This is not a story of sipping a cup of coffee sitting in Barista or Coffee Day but on a very different terrain.

This small and unpretentious hill is really about at least 300feet high and located in Chikmagalur district of Karnataka. In fact there is a hidden coffee estate in this hill, and lets have peek inside this hill…

One can climb this entire hill by walk if enthusiastic enough. Other wise you can also drive a 4 wheeler.

These are coffee seeds which are to be collected by picking up each seeds manually and dried in sun for 30-40 days. Later the seed is separated from the skin and fried and powdered. I bet reading this coffee making story is really boring. If you want to see more pictures please click here. I have tried to give explanation to each picture, so that you will feel being there!!

Interaction design - Interface design

Off late many people are able to distinguish the deference between visual design and interaction design. But Interface design is one more layer in-between the Visual and Interaction layers. Many people still believe that interface designing is same as interaction design. My thoughts on these three are…

Visual Design is top most layer which consist of look and feel part. This consists of layout composition of the page, usage of the colours, typography, icons or visual elements and any other metaphoric representations used in the page. All these are very important to enhance user experience but that’s not all.

Interface design goes one more layer below the Visual Design layer. But this does not define the behavior of the application or the task flow to achieve user’s goals. It limits to the extent of using appropriate controls for appropriate functions in given UI. E.g.: Using hyper links Vs buttons or drop-down list boxes Vs Check boxes will be decided by the interface designers. They help to make the page lay out usable with in the given limitations. Interface designing also addresses whether the UI guide lines are followed or not. Interface designing solves some superficial usability problems but does not solve any core design problems.

Interaction design comes below these both layers. In true sense it can actually affect the entire product designing and information architecture. Interaction design defines how all the elements of the software should behave/communicate with users. Interface design helps user to interact with system intuitively. But Interaction design defines what the interaction should be in the first place.

Reason why I thought of explaining these differences is, many of us so called interaction designers really do only interface design and call our self usability experts etc,. It’s not deliberately done all time nor am I trying to say that we do not do any interaction design at all. Some reasons why we end up doing only interface design are:

• Many people do not understand what interaction design is (confusion between interface and interaction design)
• Lack of opportunity to do authentic interaction design as it requires early involvement in product design stage
• Lack of number of resources to do authentic interaction design work (Typical scenario is its one person doing many projects instead of many people doing one project)
• Lack of fundamental information on product requirements and user requirements and some time the domain. (Due to this many ends up designing list of features without thinking whether those features are really required or not)
• Lack of design awareness and commitment from higher management for better usable products, and finally in some cases,
• Lack of interaction design skills itself

What’s your thoughts..?

TV Remote Lock

In past 8-9 months, numerous times I have thought of this feature in TV remote. Ever since my little daughter learned to hold the objects and press any button looking objects, I realized the problem watching the TV peacefully :-). She never allows us to watch any one channel or even worse she just increases/mutes the volume and what not. Now since we do not have the option to disable the remote we are removing the remote battery cells. This also did not work for long as she knows that some thing is wrong with the remote and insists us to put the battery back so that she can press and play with it! From this time onwards I am thinking why any manufacturer think of this simple lock system to the remote. (Just like locking mobile phone key locking system) I am sure this can be done in such a way that it does not obstruct or add up any new button. This is definitely a valid feature for the people like me who want to use this particular feature.

Know your Users..but How?

No matter how much you try to improve the interaction of a product to increase the user experience, it’s hard unless you have exposure to the real users and their goals.

I feel in India very few fortunate Interaction designers have the opportunities to meet the real users. Some fortunate ID’s may have an opportunity to meet representative users in India if the particular industry/service/domain/practice exists in India. I would say some of the very common e-commerce (and few more emerging areas) application designers can find their users easily? But most of the high tech product’s user base is largely located in West and we always have imaginary user profile in our mind.

If you share the similar experience or at least agree to this point read on…

My experience or way of knowing users so far is not been very pleasant journey however:

• I depend on product managers and some other people at work to know more about users.
• Some amount of Googling also helps to find more information about users if you are really lucky.
• Knowing or studying more about the specific domain in question also helps, but I definitely do not agree that one can have clear picture of users by just knowing the domain and how it functions.
• Gather information from friends/colleagues who might know some one in the in that particular industry so that get contact of them and learn more (by having conversations)

How do you people gather information about users and their goals?

Next I am planning to write about Interface Designing-Interaction Designing..

My First Blog

This is my first Blog entry. So I am bit hesitant with where to start and what to start with though I have some clear idea about why I need to blog.

Foremost reason why I started this blog is I wanted to meet and listen from like minded people and have some personal touch to the conversations. Like minded people meaning: People, who are in to interaction design, genuinely involved in problem solving, unpretentious, talk less but do more kind of people. I found other forums and groups which exist for similar purpose are not serving my purpose. I found them too loud, political some time or people using them as a stage for their self promotion.

I am sure there are lots of people who are in to serious interaction design but never came up in the forums and talk openly about their work or voiced their opinions in public. In contrary I find lot of people talk about very high level stuff about design, design management and all other stuff in the world as if they have seen it all been there done it all kind of attitude. I am curious to know about and hope to meet people of former category.

I am planning to share my experience as interaction designer in next few posts.