Wireframe vs. Prototype

Just read few post on IxDA forum about "Wireframe vs. Prototype".

Few of the straight forward and very clear answer were:
1) I consider a wireframe a type of prototype.
If the type of prototype has active interactive functions I call it"interactive prototype".
Prototype > Non-Active Functionality > WireframePrototype > Active Functionality > Interactive Prototype
- by Daniel

2) It is all about the notion of the fidelity of the prototype. A low fidelity prototype would be a straightwireframe. Adding more functionality like clickable regions, navigation andcss raises the fidelity. Backing a prototype with data to simulate a processalso raises the fidelity.
- by Peter Uchytil

Cricket at Office - An excited event

Halla Bol !!! at cricket match... :)

It was a splendid experience to play cricket match between our own office boys. Though it was very hot day and the humidity was high, it is usual when we play cricket, we all forget about all those obstacles and continue our play without any complains.

What is Creativity?

According to me "Creativity" is to convert original thoughts or an ideas into reality. It is not only to think differently but also to implement it.

Few definitions:

“A product is creative when it is (a) novel and (b) appropriate. A novel product is original not predictable. The bigger the concept, and the more the product stimulates further work and ideas, the more the product is creative.”— Sternberg & Lubart, Defying the Crowd.

“Creativity is the process of bringing something new into being...creativity requires passion and commitment. Out of the creative act is born symbols and myths. It brings to our awareness what was previously hidden and points to new life. The experience is one of heightened consciousness–ecstasy.”— Rollo May, The Courage to Create

Career Boosters for Success

This chunk of information I have collected from one of the most interactive forum ie. IxDA (Interaction Design Association).Over there, Sebi Tauciuc had started very good post about "what helped most in your career" where all the genius people have shared their experience and listed out thing(s) that they think have contributed to most of their success, which have brought value to their work, which have lead to where they are now and which have improved their design sense and skills.

• Failure
• Harsh Criticism
• Rejection
• Unemployment
• Experience
• Belief in oneself
• Unbounded Curiosity
• Mentors
• Confidence
• Passion
• Argue
• Explore
• Knowledge Transfer
• Blogs
• Presentation
• Articles
• Practice
• Reading
• Professional Association
• HFI Certification
• self actualization
• to take criticism gracefully

Please feel free to share more of your thing(s) which motivated you in your career.

Web Parts

Just few days back attended one of the seminar which talked about Web Parts. While going through it http://www.igoogle.com/ comes into mind. This sort of things are definately used heavily in future and soon it will be seen everywhere. It gives user a full control over the look and feel of the site and it allows him to switch on/off sections of his choice.

A web part is an ASP.NET server control which is added to a Web Part Zone on Web Part Pages by users at run time. Web Parts are an integrated set of controls for creating Web sites that enable end users to modify the content, appearance, and behavior of Web pages directly from a browser.

wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_part

Team Monitor wins Bronze in Telegames (Fungame)

Hurray!!!!!!!
We won the bronze trophy in Corporate Olympics for Telegames.

Unfortunately, I couldn't be the part of this winning combinations as I was busy attending my cousin brother's wedding. The entire team had blast after the event and attended dinner party given by organisers. Overall, it was Monitor's good show in Corporate Olympics.

Team includes (L-R and T-B) Uma Singh, Deepa Menon, Remya Menon, Milan, Ramiya Rao, Naresh Yadav, Sachin Mhatre, Sanjeev Agarwal, Chirag and Benudhar.

Team Monitor - Table Tennis Event 2008

After 2 years, I took a table tennis bat in my hand and it was some more years for others. Our management supported us to get the Table Tennis Equipment in our office as one of our recreational activity. Luckily, it happened to be on time. Just 2 days before the match we started practising hard for Table Tennis match which was suppose to be conducted at Juhu Vile Parle Gymkhana.

We participated in Mix Doubles and luckily Deepa Menon & I were selected to represent our company at Corporate Olympics (organised by Aditya Birla Group). Though we practised hard for the game apart from not being in touch with the game for years, it was not our day.
We were placed against national level champions LIC for the 1st knock out match. We tried our best to win but it was not enough at all. They simply out par us with their mastery in the game.

We stayed there till the end and witnessed all those champions for Singles and Doubles. LIC was number 1 in all the form of the games.

We left the venue with some high hopes for the 2009 event.

Monitor Group at Corporate Olympics 2008

Deepa Menon, the person responsible to take initiative and all the necessary arrangements for Monitor Group Mumbai to participate in Corporate Olympics (organised by Aditya Birla Group). It was 1st time in last 2 years since the inception of our IR group, we collectively took a part in such event. Though we were bit late to take decision of participating in these events, luckily few of the games were still available to participate.

We chose to participate in Table Tennis, Track Field, Relay and Telegames. The 1st event of Table Tennis will begin on 16th Feb and we are yet to decide upon the team members for Mix Doubles. There will be internal matches to decide upon who will represent company.

We are very much excited to be a part of this event. It is sure that this sort of event will definately help us to come out of our daily routine work and boost our energy level.

My 1st Anniversary Gifts with full of Surprises

On our 1st Wedding Anniversary ie. 6th Feb, I received wonderful surprises from my better half.... Jinal. Everything was well planned by her and all the preparation were happening 2 weeks before final day ... i was completely clueless about what was happening.

Above shown immaterial gifts are priceless for me. The kind of efforts put in to prepare all those were unexpectable. I was completely speechless when I received these gifts.

Though I am not mentioning everything in detail about it... if anyone of you wants to know more about it, don't hasitate to contact me.

Last 2 months...... no single post

Last 2 months...... no single post.

It's been really bad of not posting a single post since 2 months. I think somehow I lost interest about writing blogs. May be, I was one of those people who started writing blogs just to get popularity within co-workers, just to be in line with competitive world. I never gave proper attention to it. I kept copying content from other blogs and posted it on my blog. Fewtimes I did posted few fresh content but then it never lasted long.

But now, I strongly feel that I should start blogging it all over again, that too regularly. It always make sense to share knowledge with world.

I will stick to this and you will see atleast 4 entries every week.

Zeest is coming back!!!

ZEEST Band is coming back with a Bang. I think, almost everyone know these underdogs for their famous track "BC Sutta". I had emails conversation with them and came to know that they are launching their 1st album in the market. For more information you can visit their site on http://www.zeestmania.com/

About Zeest
Zeest is based in Karachi Pakistan, formed, owned and lead by SKIP (Saqib Abdullah), Who is the composer, guitarist, lyricist, and vocalist.

Basically ‘Zeest’ is a Persian word, which means ‘Life’, but can be used as a hope, a light, a faith etc. Skip chose this word as a title of the band just because he thought this name could reflect his work, the area where he mainly focus, i.e. highlighting on social youth issues and to create a ray of hope for them. He thinks singing for a social cause is far better than singing just for a romance. After launching other songs everyone will clearly understand the motive of the band’s ideology.

Future is of mobility : Intel's Vision

An amazing technology to come. It will definately make the life easier.

MOST IMP - This is a Spam email

Recently, I got an email from my friend and I thought its better to double check before forwarding it. I found that it was one another fake email which is running around.

http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/p/progesterex.htm
http://www.rapereliefshelter.bc.ca/faq/drugs_progesterex.html

The content of it was as follows:

Important for girls....don't hesitate to FORWARD..

Forward this to all your frnds and save them from a possiblesituation.

A woman at a Gas nightclub (Mumbai) on Saturday nightwas taken by 5 men,Who according to hospital andpolice reports, gang raped her before Dumping her at Bandstand Mumbai. Unable to rememberthe events of the evening, tests later confirmed therepeat rapes along with traces of rohypnol in herblood.Rohypnol, date rape drug is an essentially a small sterilization pill.The drug is now being used by rapists at parties torape AND sterilize their victims. All they have to dois drop it into the girl's drink.

The girl can'tremember a thing the next morning, of all that had Taken place the night before. Rohypnol, whichdissolves in drinks just as easily, is such that thevictim doesn't conceive from the rape and the rapistneedn't worry about having a paternity testidentifying him months later. The Drug's affects ARE NOT TEMPORARY - they arePERMANENT. Any female that takes it WILL NEVER BEABLE TO CONCEIVE. The weasels can get this drug fromanyone who is in the vet school or any university. it's that easy, and Rohypnol is about to break out bigon campuses everywhere.Believe it or not, there are even sites on theInternet telling people how to use it. Please forwardthis to everyone you know, especially girls. Girls, becareful when you're out and don't leave yourdrink unattended.

(added - Buy your own drinks, ensure bottles or cansreceived are Unopened or sealed; don't even tastesomeone else's drink) There was already been a report in Singapore of girlsdrink been Spiked by Rohypnol.Please make the effort to forward this to everyone youknow.

For guys - Pls inform all your female friends and relatives.

"Your life is God's gift to you. What you do forothers is your gift to God" I had been forwarded thismail you SHOULD do the same !!!!!

Friends, please make sure that before forwarding these kind of emails you 1st search over the net for the fact.

What is spam emails:
http://prashantpoladia.blogspot.com/2006/11/what-is-spam-emails.html

Saawariya (2007)

Official Site. http://www.saawariyafilm.com/
Directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali.
Star Cast: Salman Khan, Rani Mukherji, Ranbir Kapoor, Sonam Kapoor
Release Date: 9th November 2007

According to some sources the movie is an adaptation of russian short story called "White Nights" and it is a sad love story. Will Sanjay be able to make magic again like Black? Just wait and watch!!!

Designing more effective forms

Form designing is one of the most important element of web applications and websites. Every ecommerce site has an important information to fill-in. If forms are not user friendly to users they won't further browse the site.

In nutshell, form should be short and simple. Error Messages should be friendly enough and to the point on same page. This in return will make user's life easier and save their time.

“Input elements should be organized in logical groups so that your brain can process the form layout in chunks of related fields.” –HTML: the Definitive Guide.

Few very important design elements are discussed on User Interface Engineering site regarding designing an appropriate usable forms.

Cognitive walkthrough

It is a usability Testing strategy in which a developer group systematically evaluates each element on every screen in the context of the various tasks (e.g. How likely would a user click this button for Task A? What would happen if they did? etc.).

[Source - HFI]

The Cognitive Walkthrough method is a usability inspection method used to identify usability issues in a piece of software or web site, focusing on how easy it is for new users to accomplish tasks with the system. The method is rooted in the notion that users typically prefer to learn a system by using it to accomplish tasks, rather than, for example, studying a manual. The method is prized for its ability to generate results quickly with low cost, especially when compared to usability testing, as well as the ability to apply the method early in the design phases, before coding has even begun.

A cognitive walkthrough starts with a task analysis that specifies the sequence of steps or actions required by a user to accomplish a task, and the system responses to those actions. The designers and developers of the software then walkthrough the steps as a group, asking themselves a set of questions at each step. Data is gathered during the walkthrough, and afterwards a report of potential issues is compiled. Finally the software is redesigned to address the issues identified.

[Source - Wikipedia.org]

CUA Exam Experience

Here are the list of few things that I have experienced during CUA Exam:

• be calm and relax

• Carry all the BIG books with proper "post it" attached to each section and few important chapters too, so you can quickly go through the pages.

• You can avoide carrying Study Guide, Glossary & Exercise books.

• Quick Reference pages will be helpful too.

• Give attention to "FALSE", "TRUE" and "EXCEPT" word in the question.

• If you have any doubt while answering, choose the best option and then FLAG it, so it will considered as your answer even incase you submit it in a hurry.

• Even if you have little bit of doubt, flag it and refer to your notes.

• Spare 10-12 mins in the end for PRP section, its high scoring section and easy one.

• UT section was a bit tough, it was more on factical questions where you need to apply your judgement, it takes more time.

http://www.prashantpoladia.com/

CUA Exam Cleared

Hurayyyyyyyy !!!

Just cleared CUA™ (Certified Usability Analyst) Exam of HFI.

Sincere thanks to all of you, special thanks to Chirutha Dalal and Bhooshan Pandya for sharing their exam experience with me.

I am very much excited now, but yes, it do not stops here. I need to start implementing it in real world which would be much more difficult than giving exam.

Please do share your experience with me regarding Usability Implementation in your organization.

Power of GUI on iPhone

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrVt2ZcrWUY

See how Powerful UI of product/application can make a difference and make it usable to 1 year old baby.

http://www.prashantpoladia.com/

HFI's Usability Course » June 2007 Batch

Recently, I have attended HFI's Usability Course from 18th June '07 to 28th June '07 (10 Days). It has changed my vision of designing web pages and application interfaces.

It has improved my thought process before designing anything and now it became the habit of asking myself :
• "WHY"... why I am designing this way and not the other way?
• Will this be useful for the actual user and serve their purpose?
• Will this be user friendly and easy to understand?
• Will they be able to complete their task successfully?
• Will this satisfy users?
and many more...

My experience througout the course was excellent and my take home from this course were:
• User's Conceptual Model (their needs and behaviour)
­• Industry Standards related to Designs
• Design Principles
• User Centric Analysis Process
• Importance of Usability Testing throughout product development
• How to put Research into Practice
• How to design effective websites & web applications
and many more ...

Topics of HFI's Usability Courses are:
• User Centric Analysis and Conceptual Model (3 Days)
• The Science and Art of Effective Web & Application Design (3 Days)
• Practical Usability Testing (2 Days)
• Putting Research into Practice (2 Days)

I strongly recommend this course for designers to attend it.