My Photography gallery on Cooliris Wall

My Photography Stream...Ranz love Clicking!!!
Posting a 3D wall on your site is as easy as 1-2-3.

Cooliris Express is a Flash®-based version of the Cooliris Wall you can embed into your site for all visitors to enjoy. Create your own Wall with our online builder in three simple steps:

Select content1
Choose from Facebook, Flickr, Picasa, YouTube, or any Media RSS feed.

Customize2
Change the appearance, number of rows, title, and more.


Publish3
Post to Facebook, Twitter, Blogger, WordPress, or your website.

That's simple... is it not? I have uploaded my photo stream.SMOOTH, CULTIVATED, AND FULLY INTEGRATED. Check this and enjoy!

Usability = "User Ability" or "Ability to Use"

Designed some posters & wallpapers to explain about USABILITY.

UPA 2010 - Munich, Germany & UX Camp 2010 - Berlin, Germany Overview

UPA 2010 - Munich, Germany & UX Camp 2010 - Berlin, Germany Overview and my learnings!!!
As you all know i have attended UPA 2010 & UX Camp Conference at Germany in 2010. These both are my best UX conferences i have attended till date.I have taken some notes / captures and made a presentation out of it to get a glimpse of UPA2010.

To know more details about my UPA2010 in details you can check my earlier blog post. http://thinkusable.blogspot.com/2010/06/attended-upa-2010-munich-germany.html

The Colors of the WEB

The Colors of the WEB - Top 100 Brand Colors Analysis

Colors are the most important plays a powerful role in creating the web brand identity. ColorLovers team did a small analysis on colors and created a info graphic which is worth having a look, so have a look :)

As it turns out, web brands love color. Only a few of them are predominantly grey or black and white. The most popular color is blue (nearly all big social networks use it), followed by a variety of reds and oranges. Also, many of the web’s top brands, such as Google and MSN, have a multicolored logo.

The data used to create this collected from Alexa, Compete and Nielsen to compile the list of the top 100 brands on the web, and while one can always question their methodology, the info graphic definitely paints an interesting picture concerning color usage by some of the most popular brands on the web.

 

Happy Friendship Day Folks!

Friendship Day celebrations take place on the first Sunday of August every year. The tradition of dedicating a day in honor of friends began in US in 1935 and spread across the globe. On this day people spend time with their friends and express love for them. Exchange of Friendship Day Gifts like flowers, cards and wrist bands is a popular tradition of this occasion. So, what did we do this time?

This year again we made it very interesting. Designed a greeting and shared my wishes to all friends. Me and my photography friends gang planned up & gathered for a coffee  meet @ Barista, Jubilee Hills at 4.00pm. There were 35+ friends turned up, we greeted each others, cracked jokes, made fun on others, met some old  / new friends, clicking, planning for next projects, etc. BTW I had a Cold Coffee, with chocolate ice cream as topping..it's mouth watering & Yummmmmy!!!!

As usual, taken some candid pics and explored my friends new 5DMark2.. Its awesome!!! (Now added to my wish list :) How can a friendship day without a Friendship Band????  What is the difference if we wear a regular friendship band blowing OWN trumpets saying that we are creative??? Hahahhaaa!!! we did something creative....We had a Photo Negative as a Friendship Band,,,, It's our dynamic creative exponential brain (Sekhar's) Idea!!! I state again that our team is creative & amazing...!!!  Look at our Photograph below..i'm sure you will fall in love with this Lovely Friendship band idea!!! :)

(Our Group bands)

(Me & Madhavi's friendship bands)

I should proudly say about my photography club (HWS) and mainly the people... who really make the difference and think different. We all love each other and like the association / collaboration. I personally feel, It's a god's gift to have many  like minded friends. Taken some group pics and our core team (Me, Sekhar & Cishore) started explaining about our upcoming project "Save the lake" and asked everyone to take active lead for this social initiative. Spent almost 2-3 hours with these folks and headed back to home. This all made my day a memorable experience!!!

Ending up with my Favorite Friendship quote of Albet Cames.

"Don't walk Infront of me, I may not follow. Don't walk behind me, I may not lead. Walk beside me and be my friend"

Microsoft Surface FLIRTED ME!!! & My Facinations!!!

Microsoft dropped a bombshell with their new Microsoft Surface touchscreen computer that is a touchscreen coffee table.I have been very fascinated by the Microsoft Surface since the first time I tried & explored it in June 2008, at Microsoft Redmond. My manager was X-Microsoft UX'er and we both went there to play around with it and experience the touch.

We met some of UX folks and bit explored Microsoft Campus, Usability Labs, etc. and it was my first visit to US. You can imagine how exiting it would be!!!! Later we played for a while with surface table. It didn’t take time for me to fall in love with this Surface table... IT FLIRTED ME :) and felt WOW!!! We played and experiencing different applications. Amazed with photo gallery applications and very involved in exploration. The good part is that you can run several apps and multiple people can use at same time using multiple hands / figures.

Played some music, videos, maps, browsing, games... and what not dear!!! Just loved it. You know one thing... i read e-newspapers too! If you find an interesting article you want one of the others to read you can send it to him/her with just a wipe with your finger.

Tons of ideas and interaction imaginations bubbling on my head!!! and thought for a while... What am i doing, Where am I, Why am i still in a floppy disk era!!! Still old design school..Blah Blah Balh..! I was very curious to know how the surface table works and what kind of applications can be developed. Read many articles online, checked videos...done some exploration at that point of time. As usual left all these thoughts aside and back to my original work!!!

Again, never thought of Surface...Did not get an opportunity to design or think about multi touch. Recently (May 2010) again i got an opportunity to play with Surface in Europe. UID ( a leading UX design firm based out of Germany) has developed some kool apps for Microsoft Surface and they were gifted a Surface coffee table by Microsoft. Again looking at that UID - Surface Table... same fascination & same excitement....!!!

UID team showed me their demos, interactions and some cool apps which they have created for Surface and they are really cool. The new learning here was they had some RFID chips attached to some objects. Placing these objects on the surface will display the action / interaction accordingly and it was awesome! I asked many questions to get more clarity...& my brain started processing ideas...tic tic tic..!!! Again second time even after 2 years, my interaction with Microsoft Surface...it FLIRTED ME !!! Same old story.. all my ideas gone to trash & back to my original work.

Again surprisingly, very recently i came across a design firm in Hyderabad and they develop surface apps. I never though that surface apps are getting done currently in Hyderabad, as Surface is not officially launched in India. Their surface apps portfolio which they developed were bit impressive. They walked me through RFID object interaction apps like BMW car interiors apps, Credit card apps, TV news paper apps, Games, etc. Most of them are developed using WMF & Silver light. Experiencing Surface, I felt the multi touch is not much smooth as apple i pad or iphone. Sometimes it was hard to close or to interact with action buttons, navigations, etc.

Let me talk something about my iphone & ipad Multi touch Interactions. No doubt that Apple is Apple and they make sexy and sleek with great experiences. I did played & explored with iPhone & iPad too (Yes, i have taken a pic tooo) and it rocks! If Apple comes up with coffee table size iPad (they may call iTabel), We don't know what in Apple's mind :) but I will vote for Apple :)

From Microsoft point of view, we are hearing these multi touch technology from past 6-7 years. I don't know why Microsoft was unable to launch innovative solutions and introduce to market quickly and expand their business rapidly. I feel they always miss their market share in many consumer centric areas and small players will be crossing them.  Any way they have launched surface first and hope tons of apps comes up and surface gets cheaper & available in coming days.

Coming back to Surface, I see there is lot of scope to create great user experiences with multi touch surface and the surrounding also adds more impact on the user experience. Physical interaction with bare hands and flipping items with your figures ... its awesome!!! How about thinking about designing some kool apps and FLIRT our own users???? I cannot express much and you should personally experience yourself...

More from the retail, hospitality, travel and banking sectors soon, there will be lots of very interesting consumer-facing stuff coming up in near future!!! Now its time to think... think... think...!!! How we can explore great user experiences with the multi touch technology!!! As a User Experience Designers, if we are not thinking... then we are definitely lagging behind competition & defining / crafting great eXperiences..!!!

Team Work Wins - Inspirational Video

Really a heart touching video for inspiration how team work wins. Be a leader!!! Drive things!!! Dont just follow! and dont wait thinking that some will do.