UX sucks at American Airlines..from Dustin Curtis
A must read article from Dustin Curtis..Its sad and unfortunate that the short sighted decisions and approach of AA has cost the job of a competent UX designer… 
http://dustincurtis.com/incompetence.html
Redesigning Craigslist
Craigslist has been working good for many people for quite some time. So any attempt at the redesign should not rock the boat. The attempts are interesting and good. The major focus being its information architecture reorg. The search and browse mechanisms should be available for any site that promises to fetch the information or dataset that you are looking for.
So a combination of browse and search always works better for the end user. But for certain communities like ‘craigslist’ where users have been well versed with their model, got adopted to their features and information architecture, a sudden change could mean that they may have to unlearn things and do something new.
My 2 cents: Do the changes in phases. Make the design transparent slowly, so that users don’t feel the pain and keep the users involved all throughout the redesign exercise. Involve them, get their feedback and announce to them what is coming…..it will work for sure
Read the original article below…
Secret recipe for success in a failing economy
I came across this wonderful post……
How’s this for a secret of success? You don’t survive a downturn by encouraging your most experienced people to leave. Perhaps more business leaders can resist this wrong-headed practice—and hold on to those employees who have had the most practice in their careers.
Session expired…and i am tired!
Scenario:
I have to submit my tax details today and am all geared up to do that. I sign in to MyPay, open the page and look into the details and start doing the calculations and after 5 minutes start to do the updates. And i hit Submit.
“Sorry your session has expired. Please relogin!” Just like that…
Just like that you stole all my thoughts, my calculations, my time…and my effort!
Why is that? I am the lone user of my computer and why does it throw me off??
No warnings! No options! Just threw me off. I felt like a stupid…
Redesign the experience:
Allow the user to take responsibility. If he doesnt sign out or leaves his machine for his colleague to use it and the colleague changes the salary acct to his own, …. are these the alternate dangerous usecases? Then its all upto the matured individual! isnt it?
For a normal user, just allow him to work on an app as long as he wants to. When he thinks he is done, let him sign out. Anything deviating from this experience is going to cause frustrations for the user.
Hope someone listens here…TIME IS MONEY and this is true for everyone of us…
Quote on hiring
If I have two candidates in front of me, one that included a cover letter about how he hand-rolled his own blog, comments, and feed aggregator for fun to learn a new framework, and another that just sends a resume with a one-liner in the body of the email, I’m going to be much more inclined to say “hire” for the guy with the cover letter, even if the second guy’s resume is a bit better. Similarly, I’ll be more likely to say “hire” to the Eagle Scout, triathlete developer than a candidate who bludgeons me with all of their “accomplishments”…A company’s hiring process is usually a pretty good indicator of what kind of talent it employs, and thus the kind of quality the company has. The higher the bar, the better the talent, the more interesting the company.
Get REAL today…
I have been obsessed lately by this small great nifty company – 37signals. They have a slew of wonderful web based products. These products claim to make your life easy and productive and after using them for a month, I am convinced and swear by them.
Try their products, and you will also agree with me. Its not just you, the world agrees too as this small company with just 8 people have been listed by TIME as one of the top companies. Apart from theoir productive software, they have also released this cute inspirational book called -
GETTING REAL – The smarter faster easier way to build a successful web application
Man i was blown i shud say..by the book…read it to believe it…The online version is free..many budding entrepreneurs with nice niche ideas are following these people now..
Get the book here:
http://gettingreal.37signals.com/toc.php
And the company:
www.37signals.com
‘i’ for innovation – Ten Faces of Innovation
From the idea factory ‘IDEO‘ – the company that discovered the mouse, Blackberry, designed Macintosh machines , comes yet another great book on innovation. The Ten Faces of Innovation authored by Tom Kelley along with Jonathan Littman is a great read for any individual entrepreneur or established company that needs to rethink its strategy on Innovation, innovating and creating a great drove of innovators.Every company likes to sculpt a story of success. And everyone knows that success these days comes always packaged with the ‘i’ word – innovation. So whats the receipe? Kelley and Littmann shows how in a great book on all the below personas and how each persona help build the culture of invention and innovation in a company. You can find so many instances of great inventions in IDEO throughout the book, that makes it a great read.
The book covers 10 different personas organized in 3 different categories.
Learning Personas
1. The Anthropologist
2. The Experimenter
3. The Cross-Pollinator
Organizing Personas
4. The Hurdler
5. The Collaborator
6. The Director
Building Personas
7. The Experience Architect
8. The Set Designer
9. The Story Teller
10. The Caregiver
Read it and share your thoughts.
Read more about the book and the personas at
http://www.tenfacesofinnovation.com/tenfaces/index.htm
Sketching & Andrew Loomis
When it comes to sketching Andrew Loomis name is synonymous. He has been an illustrator in the 40’s and 50’s.
Some of his famous books are available to download:
http://placidchaos.com/Loomis/
Understanding USA – a visual demo answering various questions
The most elgibile Information Architect of our times – Richard Saul Wurman (who coined the word ‘Information Architect’ back in 1975) has created a splendid visual treat/celebration to answer many of america’s questions.
Follow this url to see for yourself
http://www.understandingusa.com/
As he goes on to say:
“Conversation is the most natural, effective, yet most complex mode of human connection. The goal of conversation is understanding between the participants.
Successful visual communication design can be defined as frozen conversation much as wonderful architecture is referred to as frozen music.
Understanding information is power”
Chennai – train and bus routes
Bus routes
http://www.tn.gov.in/transport/routes/routes_mtc.htm
Train routes
http://irfca.org/faq/faq-map-chennai-schematic.html
