An example of Bad Design

 

Looking at the screenshot below, you will be wondering why is this post titled “An example of Bad Design”. After all the design looks fine and elegant.

A wise man once said, “looks can be deceiving” and rightly so in this particular case. While the visual design of this page from the site gojiyo.com seems nice, it is the interaction design which fails. You are asked to choose you username, fill your email address and select a password, which you do. But post that you are asked to install the unity3D plugin and are given a button to download the plugin. Clicking on the button takes you away from this page and into a unity page where you can download the plugin. But what happened to the sign up process. Was that completed? NO!

If you are engaging the user in a flow, you should ensure that the flow is completed. What if I start downloading the plugin and then completely forget about why I was downloading it. It is, after all, an era of short attention spans. In this case the download link should have opened in a new window or perhaps better still it should have appeared after the sign up process.

 

What do you think?

Am I missing something very obvious here?

Sometimes when I click on the Sign In link on the twitter page, I am taken to the old twitter login page instead of getting the sign in control at the home page. However, there is something which I noticed right now, which I found very strange. The twitter login page does not use https: but uses simple http: .Check out the screenshot below

 

Contrast this to the login page of Google, where you can clearly see the https and the secure seal on the browser.

 

Did someone at twitter just forget about the whole https thing? Has this gone unnoticed for this long? Or am I missing something very obvious over here?

Absolutely Brilliant

 

I came across this youtube video in a tweet. This is simply amazing and it expresses a lot of what I have felt developing applications to work in IE. The composition is awesome and well sung!

 

Entrepreneurship in India – The role of mainstream media

 

The Economic Times had a story yesterday on the growing popularity of group buying sites in India. I do not read the Economic Times daily and definitely not from end to end. I rely mostly on recommendations from people I follow on twitter or my friends.  But I had completely forgotten that there are other people I know who read ET.

In the afternoon, I got a call from my grandfather who asked me what was I upto and how was my work coming along. I updated him about my plans. As always, he asked me to focus on my health and have a clear mind on whatever I was planning to do. He then told me about the story he had read in ET about group discount sites. He thought the whole idea of group buying through a website was very innovative. He then encouraged me to be positive and continue my work with a positive frame of mind as there were a lot of opportunities, evident from the success of group buying sites.

The key learning from this incident was the importance of the mainstream media in promoting entrepreneurship in India. One of the biggest barriers to start an entrepreneurial journey in India is the social cost that entrepreneurs have to pay, highlighted well in this article by Gautam Gandhi of Google. Most people who aspire to be entrepreneurs in India follow blogs like pluggd.in, participate in forums like VentureWoods or network with others in organizations like TiE. At such places, the people you interact with are inherently entrepreneurial who understand the trials and tribulations of being an entrepreneur in India. However, the general junta does not read pluggd.in and it can be sometimes difficult for entrepreneurs to explain what they are trying to achieve.

Here comes the role of mainstream media. If I had told my grandfather about the concept of group buying sites and its potential, it would not have carried the same weight as the story in ET. That is the power of mainstream media. People associate a news story with prestige and if entrepreneurs are covered in ET then surely entrepreneurship must be prestigious.

It takes time for new ideas to be accepted in society. The idea of a private sector job over a government job was unthinkable in the 90’s for most. However, now you have IAS officers quitting their government positions to go through the one year program at ISB to prepare themselves for a private sector job. Similarly, the idea of quitting your job and jumping into the uncertain world of entrepreneurship was and in many cases still is unthinkable. But surely, with coverage like the one in ET yesterday, the unthinkable shall become the acceptable pretty soon.

The path of the Doer

 

I read the following at some blog or site. I can’t remember exactly where. But I really liked it. It was titled “The Path of the Doer”

 

Set yourself a goal.

Set yourself a deadline.

Define success at the start.

Make a plan to make it happen.

Build a team to help you.

Get the team to sign up, head and heart, to the plan.

Understand there will be hurdles, barriers. Accept them. But defeat them.

Work each day toward getting things done. A little can do a lot.

Keep the end goal in your mind at all times.

Understand the importance of your energy. Your stubbornness. Your persistence.

Half way through a project is always the lowest point. You are neither at the start, nor at the end. Energy dips, morale is low. Have a day off.

The next day remind yourself why you started it in the first place.

Focus. Focus. Focus. But focus on the most important thing.

Tell the world what you are doing.

Tell the world your deadline.

Celebrate progress. Any progress.

Never give up.

Look back at how far you have traveled. It will surprise you.

It will also tell you that you are closer to your goal than ever before.

Keep going.

Then one day, after many, many days, you will complete your goal.

You got there in the end.

Your words and your deeds are one. Most people in life are just talkers. But you are a doer. Well done.

by David Hieatt

Howdy!

It’s been a while since the last post. I do have a lot to share and I will do that in the coming weeks. Reading the blogs of others, I have come to realize that my writing skills need to improve. And the best way is to blog.

Some of the things you can expect from now on:

A post every fortnight. Could be anything, though I have decided that I am going to play the analyst and the critic.

You could read book reviews once in a while.

And for those of you who are wondering where have I disappeared, please follow me on twitter.

Cheers!

Just an Update

 

What have I been up to over the last couple of days? Well I was trying to understand the ASP.NET MVC framework and how it works. I have been hearing a lot about (seeing/reading a lot about?) the ASP.NET MVC framework and wanted to gauge whether I should switch over to MVC framework for my latest project. After all, its supposed to be more maintainable, supports TDD and gives you greater control over the html which is generated. Plus my friend who will be helping me with this project is a java developer and the web application to him means MVC.

However, having seen a couple of videos where a sample data driven application was built using MVC, I realized that for now I am sticking with webforms. I am just so used to it that it will take time to switch. And I don't have the time. Not right now! Switching over to MVC has its obvious advantages, but the time taken to learn it just outweighs those advantages. So webforms it is for the time being.

Now that I decided on webforms, I started getting my hands dirty doing database design. A part of it is proving to be more challenging than I initially thought. Anyway I have decided on the db and now plan to upload some data to validate the design. This is a real pain. The data is available as static text and I need to manually recognize various fields from that text and write (cut and paste) those values in a spreadsheet. This is such a pain. I wish I did not have to do it manually, but cant help it. Of course I am looking at ways to automate the whole process but I think it will take time. Right now I just need to get the data in the database so I can continue building my app.

Of course I will also need to build a utility to upload data to the db from excel. Reminds me of the pdm_upload utility that came with Service Desk. That experience of bulk data uploading is going to come handy now :). So I got my hands full for the time being. That's good! There are a whole lot of other things to take care of as well.