Envisioning Design

Fundraising for Gudia Bua

2009-05-11T10:01:00.001-07:00

Hi All,

Know Your Vastu

2008-12-31T08:58:00.000-08:00

Welcome to knowyourvastu.com

We are glad to introduce our professional service and guidance on Vastu Shastra, an ancient Indian architecture.We are a team of Vastu Specialist , Architects and Designers who are dedicated to serve and spread awareness about the importance of Vastu in one's surrounding.

Visit http://www.knowyourvastu.com/ for more details.

Are we taking Painkillers?

2008-05-27T22:59:00.001-07:00

An Analogy:
The most common approach to reduce pain is to take a painkiller. That’s what we usually do, right? This approach has gone so deep into our practice that we do it almost every time without even noticing it. Day by day the problem becomes more complex and confusing that even painkillers stop alleviating the pain and on top of that start reflecting their side effects too. A helpless and pray full situation, isn’t?
The affected part is not operated until it becomes inevitable. Operation costs pretty high as compared to the routine medications and being unaware about the increasing complexity of problem over a period of time, operation could become an only solution.

Providing symptomatic solutions to the customers is a very similar situation as above. By listening to what customers WANT and providing solutions/services solely based on that data is similar to giving him a painkiller. Whether it is a product experience or service experience limiting it to providing “what customers WANT” is an invitation to a potential problem though very much predictable.
Though many leading organizations have known this fact for long and provide a holistic solution and experience based on “what customers NEED”. It is not that they ruled out the market research data as it is their primary step to diagnose a problem, just that they analyzed it in different light. A dedicated team, which is highly sensitized for customer centric design and solutions, works quite closely with rest of the teams, to ensure the solution to be driven by human factors. Using the probing and intuitive approach most of the time the problem itself reveals possible ways to lead to a solution.
Having such dedicated teams is no longer seen as an overload over the annual budget of the organizations, which innovate and redefine their product/service experience for their customers.
Several re-orgs in organizations have given the opportunity to inject this approach through out the stream and making customer centric solutions an integral part of planning and strategy.

Obviously this approach is not for those who enjoy surviving in the market, but for those who are grown up and ready to provide experience and make a difference.

Usable 'Help' Sections on web

2008-02-09T20:52:00.000-08:00

User Interfaces must be self evident. 'Help' section should be the last section to design. A good help section with confusing and unusable main section can keep user stuck in the help section forever. A good design can eliminate the use of help section. The lesser users drift to the help section, the more usable is the design. Designing simple is the most difficult. Simple and self evident user interfaces are easy to learn and recall. A simple design can teach user how to use application without going to a help section. Many people involved during development think that a help section is sufficient for teaching users how to operate most of any application, but this is not true. The help section of most applications, Web-based or otherwise, is used by the expert users to explore every aspect of the application and to learn more. In case of a new feature or application, the design should itself provide help to new users in their task without forcing them to use the help section. The proper way to help users understand how your application works is to bring the help section to them upfront in your design.

‘Help' section is fine when it comes to understanding new topics or functions. But when users need help for completing task or overcoming ‘pain points’, that questions the usability of website or application.

Design Spectrum

2008-02-03T03:30:00.000-08:00