Experience in User Research, Interaction Design (UI), Usability Testing, Gestural Interface, Mobile Design, iPhone & iPad Apps Designs, E-commerce Websites & Enterprise Web Applications
Sep 1st
Mobile Trends
For last 5ys or so, we have seen a gradual transition of mobile popularity from a simple feature phone to a feature rich smart phone. I think, this transitions is also fueled by growth of social networking websites, collaborative gamings, music downloads, 3G/4G, LTE services, easy GPS access, etc. Whenever i see any mobile Advertisement, they show facebook and messenger chats on the mobile homescreens. The importance of handset hardware and form-factor is diminishing. Its shown as mear rectangular block with a large screen. The software & content delivery is overtaking it. The TV and newspaper Ads dont show the mobile form factor, but the Apps Icons on the homescreen. The whole focus has shifted.
View Full post at posterous. Post your comments and discuss var a2a_config = a2a_config || {}; a2a_config.linkname="Handset Manufacturer’s role in future Mobile UX"; a2a_config.linkurl="http://www.sameerchavan.com/handset-manufacturers-role-in-future-mobile-ux/";Jul 27th
I wanted an online tool to create simple and fast wireframe for iphone, ipad and web applications. I evaluated couple of online websites for this before subscribing a paid membership for one of them(mockflow). I know there are may desktop based wireframe tools. Most popular being MS Power Point, Word, Excel & visio for Windows and for Mac OS its keynote & Omnigraffle. There are also other regular hi-fidelity tools like Photoshop, Illustrator & Flash.
One funny thing i have noticed that some good wireframe sites (pidoco.com, hotgloo,) are extremely expensive and not meant for individuals. They cost something like $50/month to $600/month. They only intend to sell this to corporate and not to individuals.
Here are few that i tried personally.
1. MockFlow ($60/year) - Flash based. Has desktop flash tool that sync to web tool.
This is the one I have finally subscribed. Its excellent tool with predefined templates, a free template store, share your templates, etc. It has simple drag and drop shapes and icons to your design, export as png, pdf, ppt and view site map. Best part is collaboration with comments, whiteboard, version control, etc. You can even have a co-editor.
Cons – sometime its slow and the sync dosent happen. There are still many More >
Jun 30th
With the news of withdrawal of Microsoft kin mobiles(Project Pink), for whatever rumored reasons, I am wondering if there was really a need for different UI for different user segments. As Kin phones were targeted for Teens with low cost and cloud storage and sync, the same can be achieved with just a change of skins to OS based phones. The OS based phones already offer social applications, cloud syncing, multimedia and games. Here i am talking about phones like iPhone & Android. Windows 7 is still not out in the market.
Traditionally all the hardware companies made many mobile phones , each targeted for ’so-called’ different user groups – college going, business users, multimedia users, gaming users, etc. And accordingly the price and features are added or removed from each phone to create thousands of models. Non of these phones are perfect for anyone. Forget the UI design. Do you really need so many variety of phones from same company ? or only one phone for all, like iPhone from Apple. Yes, Apple only has one phone.
I use iPhone for emails, photos, cloud syncing, etc. all the day. When i go home, my 3yr daughter uses my iPhone very easily to navigate to games and play games. More >
Jun 29th
Whenever I look at a great software product or a product company, I see that they were started by someone with strong engineering background. I can hardly recall if there are any product companies stated by designers. By saying designers, I mean UX designers (Lets keep Industrial designer out for time being). Ya, designers do have stared some UX service companies. What after that ?
Whenever you have a great idea, designers are constrained by their lack of software programming knowledge. They have to depend on software engineers. They cannot own the product code or check-in their idea to apps stores. Whereas software programmers can easily hire designers and still fully control the code ownership. Is it that in a software product, UX is not a core requirement ? UX can be done by anyone with good commonsense and little readings.
Or is it that the entrepreneurial nature of UX designer is less then a engineer ? Do designers like the cozy jobs and live in their fancy world of creativity & criticism ? Are they afraid to take business challenges which programmers can take? Are designers soft hearted and shy ? I know UX designers cannot be that shy, they do have to sell their ideas like a sales persons. More >
Mar 8th
some abstracts from web on Mobile Future
1. Mobile advertising will surpass the decidedly outmoded Web1.0 & computer-centric advertising- and ads will become content, almost entirely. Advertisers will, within 2-5 years, massively convert to mobile,
location-aware, targeted, opt-ed-in, social and user-distributed ‘ads’; from 1% of their their budgets to at least 1/3
of their total advertising budget. Advertising becomes ‘ContVertising’ – and Google’s revenues will be 10x of what
they are today, in 5 years, driven by mobile, and by video.
2. Tablet devices will become the way many of us will ‘read’ magazines, books, newspapers and even ’attend’ live concerts, conferences and events.The much-speculated Apple iPad will kick this off but every major device maker will copy their new tablet within 18 months. In addition, tablets will kick off the era of mobile augmented reality. This will be a huge boon to the content industries, worldwide – but only if they can drop their mad content protection schemes, and slash the prices in return for a much larger user base.
3. Many makers of simple smart phones – probably starting with Nokia- will make their devices availablefor free – but will take a small cut (similar to the current credit-cards) from all transactions that are done More >
Feb 4th
Oct 9th
Usability Roles, Job Title and competencies
Click the image to enlarge. Please send suggestions and corrections. If I have left any roles and titles do let me know.
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Jun 3rd
The Power of Ideas is an initiative by The Economic Times to encourage anyone and everyone with an idea to realize his entrepreneurial dream. Ideas will be polished and nurtured with personalized guidance from senior mentors before being submitted to the largest group of investors for funding
We participated in this competition with our idea of healthcare portal for India - www.healthyjeevan.com We made business plans and investment proposals. Those were submitted to the Economic Times review panel. We got selected in the first round among 12000 entries. Unfortunately we couldnt clear the 2nd round of Elevator pitch. I messed up with numbers. But we will try again for other investors.
Healthyjeevan.com - Your online friend for health issues, product reviews and discussions
We received this appreciation certificate .
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