Events from chibangalore

Report: World Usability Day 2007 - Bangalore

Sun, 18 Nov 2007 09:22:15 GMT

November 5th and over 120 designers, technologists, usability professionals and public attendees gathered at the NIAS Auditorium at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. The event: World Usability Day, which was founded to ensure that the services and products important to life are easier to access and simpler to use. Organized and supported by CHI Bangalore, UPA Bangalore, leading usability companies, and usability enthusiasts, the event focused on Healthcare, Education, and Government Services and other public services and utilities that touch our lives everyday. This local event was sponsored by Cisco, Google and Human Factors International.
The event kicked off with an introduction to the World Usability Day. The five-hour long event included talks and presentations by experts in the field, the results of usability testing of a public services website, and a very engaging design workshop.

Talks and Presentations
Dr. Girish Prabhu, director for design research and innovation for Asia in Intel’s emerging markets platform group, shared key perspectives on the design of the Community PC. He highlighted the importance of understanding stakeholder needs and conducting ethnographic studies while designing products, the lack of which resulted in the failure of the Community PC.
Prof. M.P. Ranjan, member of the Faculty at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad (NID), India, and Chair of the Task Force on GeoVisualization set up by the Government of India spoke about how design is about real world contact and the need for rethinking so that design has social equity. His presentation titled Towards an Accessible World – Opportunity for Designers also spoke about how designers should cater to each individual, since each individual’s needs are specific and different.
Sean Blagsvedt, CEO of Babajob.com, spoke about how an innovation can fight poverty in a scalable fashion. His presentation also covered on the HCI aspects of the site and how it helped in reaching out to non-computer literate users.
Dr Reynold Washington, the Director STI, HIV Care and Surveillance at Karnataka Health Promotion Trust (KHPT) and Gururaj H, Sr. Officer at KHPT highlighted the various initiatives undertaken by the KHPT to make a positive impact on the health of populations in India. Sanctioned by the Government of Karnataka, with the University of Manitoba, Canada as the implementing agency, KHPT, through research and innovation, training, and capacity building, aims to develop better technological strategies towards HIV prevention, care and support. Acid Test Results

Sarit Arora from Human Factors International (HFI) presented the results of usability testing conducted on a public website, the IRCTC site of the Indian Railways. The key results of this test were that while most people found the service useful, they were frustrated using the site. Usability issues faced by the test participants were effectively shown in the form of videos to the audience. Design Workshop on Key Public Service Scenarios
A design workshop was conducted in which the audience enthusiastically participated. Split into teams, the participants were given public service scenarios and a problem statement. The public services scenarios were on the following themes- Designing mobile phone for the illiterate population, healthcare records and design for the elderly. The teams had to then brainstorm and design a solution within the specified time frame of 30 minutes. The solution then was presented to a panel of judges in a two minute presentation. The workshop saw a buzz of activity, with participants excitedly working together towards one common goal – to design the best solution. The results were announced at the end of the day and prizes presented to the top three solutions. Workshop designs will be posted on the event wiki for further discussions. To see more photos of the Bangalore Event, see this flickr set World Usability Day Bangalore 2007 Also read Prof. Ranjan's blog post on the World Usability Day 2007 Bangalore Design for India - Prof. Ranjan's Blog . You can also download the presentation that he gave at the event. Event posts for all the events around the world can be see at the World Usability Day community site. The World Usability Day Community is a place to meet, share and interact with experts, promoters, and supporters of Usability from around the world. This site is available to everyone throughout the year, not just on World Usability Day. Check out the site and get involved.

World Usability Day 2007 - Bangalore

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 14:05:28 GMT

World Usability Day was founded to ensure that the services and products important to life are easier to access and simpler to use. WUD focuses on raising awareness and visibility of usability and user centered design and is organized every year by volunteers and local event coordinators from around the world. Whether usability professionals or just enthusiastic (or frustrated) users, each participant makes a contribution to "making life easy".

Usability and its Impact in Making Better Healthcare & Public Services – Bangalore, November 05, 2007 On Nov 5, 2007, World Usability Day will be hosted at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. The event is being organized and supported by UPA Bangalore, CHI Bangalore, leading usability companies, and usability enthusiasts. The event will include designers, technologists, business professionals and is open to public.

WUD Bangalore 2007 will focus on applying ‘usability’ and ‘design’ thinking to making life easier and more usable for the common man (us!) in India. Among other areas the event will focus on Healthcare, Education, and Government Services and other public services and utilities that touch our lives everyday. It will include how Information and Communication Technologies and services can make this happen.
When and Where? Date: Monday, 05 November, 2007, Time: 4.00 pm to 7.30 pm Venue: Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore
How to register Register directly at: http://hcibangalore.pbwiki.com/World%20Usability%20Day%2C%20Bangalore%2C%202007 ( Wiki Password: usability )
What will happen? Acid Test: A team of usability professionals will be conducting usability testing of public services websites including the Indian Railways and the Indian Airlines October. The results from this public usability study will be shared with the audience to raise awareness about the usability of public services.
Presentations and talks by experts: Hear from real world experts who have tried to make a difference in public services including healthcare, e- governance and the healthcare space. Also, we will have experts who will bring in the focus of usability and how it can make a difference in the public services and healthcare in India and the emerging markets.
Workshop on designing new public services: Participants will be divided into groups and given the challenge of designing new services around the theme of ""How usability can impact public services and healthcare in India". They will be provided with materials for brainstorming and data points and constraints for informing their designs. The panel of experts will judge the best entry at the event - Lot of exciting prizes are waiting to be won.
Raves, Rants, and Ramblings: (Impromptu presentations, discussions, food, and photo sessions: The event will contain several opportunities for breaking into smaller groups where people from the community can present and discuss issues or new methods. There will be spaces for informal community discussions, idea sharing and networking.
Organizers :
For further information please contact:
Sarit Arora - sarit@humanfactors.com Amit Pande - Pande.amit@gmail.com Muthu - muthuonline@gmail.com Sudhindra - sudhindra.v@humanfactors.com Rahul - rahul.arora@honeywell.com Navneet - navneet.nair@gmail.com Suresh - cre8tvt@gmail.com

CHI 2007 Perspectives: Opening Plenary

Durgaprasad Vemula — Thu, 17 May 2007 05:45:59 GMT

In his talk “Why Intuitive Design?” Bill Moggridge talked us through how people adopt technology.

Technology Adoption

Every innovative product or tool goes through a typical adoption lifecycle,

* A small but critical mass of early adopters start using it. * Some of these adopters will come up with very practical ways of applying the product to their work context to improve productivity or to be more effective. * As volumes rise over time, prices start going down. There comes a time when the price points are just right for the consumer market.

Business users are asking, “How does it improve my productivity?” Consumers on the other hand ask, “How does it fit my lifestyle?” Any product that answers this question well will make a successful transition to a mass-market consumer market.

A Case Study

Bill spoke about the divergence in the evolution of SMS/ text messaging in Japan & US as an example of this transition. Japan has always been considered the forerunner in the usage of SMS services (iMode), the reason for adoption and popularity of this technology had very specific cultural and environmental contexts,

* In Japan it is considered impolite to talk on the phone in public places like the train. * Long train commutes as most people have in Japan, gave them enough time to learn & use SMS/text services

In the US the car being the primary mode of commuting provides a private space where people feel free to talk and hence the preference for voice communications.

Demystifying Innovation

Another major focus of his keynote was to look beyond the myth surrounding the creation of several iconic “digital technology products”. Bill Moggridge referred extensively to “interviews”:http://www.designinginteractions.com/interviews he had conducted with several Silicon Valley pioneers to try and de-mystify the process of creation as not just the ‘eureka moment’ but the hard work and sweat (research?) preceding it.

In retelling these stories, Bill Moggridge puts these seminal moments within the context of a design process, # Frame or reframe the problem or objective # Create & envision alternatives # Select from those alternatives, knowing intuitively how to choose the best approach
- Intuition based on rigorous work can lead to productive solutions. Research or in other words immersion in a topic at some point could help you see the connections (synthesize a solution) without conscious thought # To visualize & prototype # Synthesize a solution from all the relevant constraints, understanding everything that will make a difference to the result.
Reference – “Designing Interactions”:http://www.designinginteractions.com/book

Food for thought

This part of the talk left me wondering about the differences between the lives of these inventors (while they were inventing these products) and our everyday work contexts. A common thread was the passion of the inventors, their belief that a solution to the problem they were addressing could fundamentally alter the way people accessed and used computers & technology.

So what is the mystery of the missing passion in the context of our everyday work?

* Is it the lack of an inspiring problem to solve or is it the lack of information about the problem domain? Do we see the pain that users & customers experience as a bullet point on a PPT or as a living person or group? * Is it too much immersion in the nitty-gritties of work that you fail to see the big picture? Have we gotten into a habit of looking at the world with a narrow vision and judge what is useful & what is not? * Do we expose ourselves to the ideas and discussions on the periphery of our domains? At some point all main stream technologies like the Internet, SaaS, etc. were on the periphery. Perhaps it is time to look at the social networking phenomenon seriously for enterprise applications and not dismiss it as something relevant only for college kids?

So how do you make “work” as enriching as the “life” of these inventors?
Does anyone want to take a shot at finding the solution to the mystery of work? :-)

Expanding Boundaries of HCI

Sarit Arora — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 07:35:03 GMT

Expanding Boundaries of HCI : Chibangalore Event 22nd of March 2007 Chibangalore was formed to address the growing needs of the HCI professionals and students in Bangalore. Within the last year and half , 6 events have been organized with host of speakers from around the world. 2007 kick starts with an event in March. Topic: Expanding the Boundaries of HCI Guest Speakers: We have two renowned speakers for the event Joseph Kaye (Jofish) from Cornell University and Dr. Eric Schaffer , CEO, Human Factors International . Event Details Date : 22th March 2007 Venue : St. Mark ' s Hotel 4/1 St. Mark's Road Bangalore - 560001 Time : 3:00 - 5:45 pm Agenda 3:00 – 3:15 pm - Chibangalore Updates – Durga Prasad, Sarit Arora, Aurobinda Pradhan 3:15 – 4:00 pm - Expanding the Scope: Pushing the Boundaries of HCI – Joseph Kaye 4:00 - 4:10 pm - Q&A Session "As information technologies become ever more popular and ubiquitous, it becomes increasingly important to think about how we in human-computer interaction can build for, support, and understand the rich and varied ways that users interact with and through devices". Jofish will discuss ways to think about experience-focused HCI rather than task-focused. This approach considers technology use outside the workplace and designing information technologies that can support rich interactions. He will draw from a variety of research both within and outside the field, including his own work on computerized scent output and on building technologies for couples in long distance relationships. 4:10 – 4:45 pm – Break: Light refreshments will be served 4:45 – 5:30 - Usability PETscan – Dr. Eric Schaffer 5:30 - 5:45 - Q&A Session HFI's Usability PETscan through analysis of persuasion, emotion and trust provides deep insight into the users decision-making processes to create positive relationships with consumers and impact conversion. The PETscan solution provides an opportunity to truly understand the consumer experience—it gives a thorough analysis of the elements, content and interactions that lead to a more complete experience for your existing and potential consumers." Dr. Schaffer will conduct a session introducing you to the PETscan technique. Registration: There is no registration fee. Please confirm your participation by registering at the following link. If you are in the database then please mark "YES" @ 'Register me for the March event' column http://groups.yahoo.com/group/chibangalore/database?method=reportRows&tbl=1 If you have any difficulty in accessing the link please confirm your participation by sending a mail to Sarit Arora ( sarit(at)humanfactors.com)

Chibangalore - Update 2007

Sarit Arora — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 11:44:31 GMT

Chibangalore was formed to address the growing needs of the HCI professionals in Bangalore. Bangalore is the hub of IT in India and now the IT companies are giving a lot of emphasis to usability and user centered design activities. In fact, according to the latest statistics from Google, the word ‘usability’ was most searched in the world from Bangalore! It was not that there weren’t any existing groups in South India which provided a platform to interact. There is the Easy conference on usability which takes place in Bangalore annually and has a sizable brand presence. But an annual event ,with limited participation, does not cater to the growing needs of the HCI community in bangalore. It was seen that the HCI professionals were grappling with lots of issues specific to the needs of the Indian IT industry. For example – Users not being in the same country, how to integrate user centered process with the software design life cycle, how to institutionalize usability in software outsourcing companies etc. Understanding this need, Chibangalore was formed which represents the software products, services and the consulting companies in Bangalore. The aim was to have more number of events and touch points within the community so that the sharing of best practices processes and developments can be done more frequently. Also, one of things this forum wants to achieve is to make this platform more inclusive- Include most of the companies representing many streams within IT so that the learning’s can be disseminated across the domains. Within the last year and half close to 6 events have been organized with host of speakers from around the world: Here are some of the speakers who have presented in chibangalore events

Jonathan Arnowitz - Rapid Prototyping and Demo of Prototyping Tools
Michael Arent - Moving from a engineering centered to a user centered organization
Jeremy Ashley - Head user experience Oracle
Joseph Konstan - President of ACM Sigchi
Geetha Naryanan - Founder and director of Srishti school of design

The events have been attended by wide array of companies like Infosys, SAP, Honeywell, HP, HFI, Microsoft, Oracle, Sun and many others. Companies have taken turns in organizing the events. Taking the lead in organizing are SAP, HFI, Honeywell, Oracle and Microsoft. To kick start the 2007 activities, there is an event planned in March. For more details, watch this space. To make Chibangalore as a more inclusive forum this new website has been initiated. You can contribute as an author; add comments to the articles, rate authors, add biographies etc. So please go ahead register yourself using the register link on the top right corner and start contributing!.