Read the second issue of the Social Technology Quarterly, published by Kuliza Technologies here.
Social Technology Quarterly (Volume 1| Issue 2) View more documents from Kuliza Technologies
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They say that the Social Media Technologies is the in thing right now. Some call is fashionable, while some call it a necessity to keep up with the times, while some see a real value add in it. While many companies adopt it, not all understand it completely. It is now well accepted that the Social Media Technologies (SMT) are an integral part of the marketing budget of any company. The adoption of SMT should be tied down to a business need and an assist with the business processes. Apart from the usual goals of increase in sales, the one thing that the social media technologies has done is, making the consumer more informed and help them in taking decisions that are influenced by a gamut of reasons. Come to think of it, the advent of SMTs follow a similar pattern. resulted in the way the audiences are exposed to media. We consume stuff in a different way than we used to in the days prior to the SMTs. To support the claim of Social Media technology being omnipresent in the lives of many now, one has to understand where this comes from. The notion of followers Over the course of this article, I wish to do a construct of the notion of the Social Media Technology as a new kind of media. I shall refer to Bolter and Grusin, amongst others to understand why the notion of the Social Media technology is a New Media that plays out on the notion of remediation. I shall be looking into this with the example case study on Social Commerce and how the notion of media and Social media is changing and will continue to change the way we do our commerce. Marshall McLuhan one of the greatest writers on media . . . → Read More: The Social Media Construct – a case in remediation One of the most influential designers of all time and also the people behind the “design” of the National Institute of Design in India, did a video the Powers of ten. Here’s more about the video from Wikipedia: Powers of Ten is a 1968 American documentary short film written and directed by Ray Eames and her husband, Charles Eames, rereleased in 1977.The film depicts the relative scale of the Universe in factors of ten (see also logarithmic scale and order of magnitude). The film is an adaptation of the 1957 book Cosmic View by Kees Boeke,and more recently is the basis of a new book version.Both adaptations, film and book, follow the form of the Boeke original, adding color and photography to the black and white drawings employed by Boeke in his seminal work. In 1998, “Powers of Ten” was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”. You have to check this out if you have not done so. Even if you have, its always awesome to see it one more time. Came across this really intriguing presentation on the UX. The person is a UX recruiter, and has worked across geographies, with numerable people, or varied experiences and skill set. Truth and Dare – Out of the echochamber into the fire View more presentations from Jason Mesut The presenter does a great job of highlighting some interesting Truths an Dares. Having been in the UX field for quite some time now, I know recruiting it a big challenge to anyone dealing with UX professionals. To me subjectivity of the field is hugely responsible for it. And secondly, it is the notion of calling oneself a designer, just by learning a few tools. I would soon be putting up a presentation on my experiences with recruiting in the UX field. Would love to hear from more people who are into it. I am a firm believer of the point that designers (and just about anyone in the creative field) needs to be a good critic. They need to critique not only the innumerable work of others but also of oneself. I also insist upon the value of critique and the art of critiquing a lot in my design workshops too. In this respect I would like to share this semantic differential diagram that I had come across during my masters studies. There are two key things that the designer has to consider, when looking into doing a critique of things. 1. Audience and 2. Content. 1. Audience The first important thing is the audience. For any critique exercise to take place, understanding the audience is vert important. Once one has an understanding of the audience, they can look to deciding the language and the tone for the critique. In my opinion the language should be kept simple and in easy to understand terms. One can adopt a particular tone depending on the audience. Whether to make it filled with case studies (if the audience is an academic audience) or to make it filled with stories / anecdotes if the audience is more laypersons. 2. Content This has two parts to it. One is the content you wish to critique on and the other is the content you write in support of the things you wish to critique on. The points to critique on could be the functional aspects, the visual and aesthetic elements of a design. The critic should look to going into the visceral, behavioral and reflective levels of a particular design (D Norman in The Design of Everyday Things) . Species of Criticism This above semantic differential outlines the different approaches one could take for criticism. Would love to read more . . . → Read More: The art of critiquing Facebook is taking the world by storm. No i mean it. They literally are. Look into the developments from the recent f8 conference where they launched the Timeline concept. It’s like a public scrapbook that is showing your lifetime (or maybe only on facebook) in a linear chronological manner. It almost appears like Facebook is on its path to supreme world dominancy. They already have more than 700 million users and that is a huge number! The one thing that I really hope is that Facebook can take the position in which it is in to make the world a better place. Check out this concept video of what they call the Timeline. While not all have the timeline concept enabled, a lot do have the newer facebook layout. There is the element of the Twitter (in the way a real time ticker on the right that keeps telling you what your ‘friends’ are doing), and the Google+ (in the way the images are displayed in the timeline) The Social platforms wars just does not stop from getting more interesting! Often I wonder where this will lead to. Let us hope that it does so without any ill effects on our souls. One of the key things that I have learnt over the past decade of my being involved in the design field is that, it is about solving a problem. Often the problems need not be a large one. A design should solve some problem in some form. It could be a direct or an indirect solution. The results could be tangible or intangible. More often than not, we designers try to make things complex by adding complex elements to the solutions we provide. But as a firm believer of simplicity in the stuff I design, and the life I live, I know simplicity is a tough thing to attain. Here’s a great example of how a simple design solution can be involved in creating an impact that is huge. We have heard a lot about alternative sources of energy and electricity, but here we look into an example of something that is so basic that you would think why you did not think about this earlier. It is something that we can adapt to the communities that are devoid of light and the light brings in a sense of happiness that cannot be measured. Simple design. Impactful Design. Information Visualization is something that has always interested me, and I am always amazed at the heights people go to illustrate huge amount of data. With more and more resources to visualize data, the Information Visualizations are now more dynamic than static. Came across this visualization recently and was totally blown away by it! KIVA the social entreprise, showcases all its activities through this amazing InfoViz. Do check it out! The same in static would definitely not had the same User Experience as this one does, for the viewer! My recent talk at STC UX conference aimed to throw light on why everyone is a designer and is contributing to the co-creation of UX. We user experience designers, live in exciting yet challenging times. From the rise of social networks, to the evolution of different devices and platforms, to our design decisions being governed by someone else, the excitement for the field is unbounded. However the excitement also comes with its set of challenges. Design being discussed in the board rooms, poses a lot more challenges. While its an indicator that it is being given its long due value, it also leads to a lot of expectations. This also allows that a lot of people start pitching into the design process. The rise of the adoption of Agile framework at work places, the decision making in design is starting to get faster and often without much thought about ideas. Another phenomenon that is gaining momentum, is that with design gaining more prominence across projects, often we end up having many more people who need not be from a design background, to contribute to the designs. These come mainly from the Business teams, the technology teams or even the marketing teams. This is also corroborated by the fact that there is a rise of a lot of crowd sourcing platforms. Design faces a lot of challenges when going via a crowd sourcing platform. As a result of all the above, the UX field is undergoing a paradigm shift. In a follow-up to my earlier article on Co-creating the User experience, I recently gave a talk on the same topic at the STC UX conference, held on 27th August at Bangalore. Here is the presentation that I used in the talk: Co-creating the User Experience View more presentations from Kshitiz Anand . . . → Read More: The rise of SoLoMoN A lot has been going on in the corporates, with many tie-ups and mergers. These activities are resulting in a lot of identity being changed and new ones being formed. Change is required for a company to grow. And identities are often a key part of the entire makeover process. Recently Hero Honda went through one such change, and has now re-branded itself at the Hero Moto Corp. It also introduced its new logo. Here’s the design brief for the logo design : “The new logo stands for the new face of India – that youthful energy and ‘can do’ spirit. It is in true sense the “Indian Catapult” which signals that while it is deeply rooted in Indian values, it is also poised to go for global expansion – a Leap of Faith.” The new Hero logo My initial thoughts on this was definitely not positive, as the logo as such was a bit difficult to comprehend. The logo is definitely contemporary, especially with the font it has used. But then that was the case with another recent logo fiasco, the Airtel one. This new Hero Moto corp logo has two components to it. One is the graphic part and the other is the text / typographic part. The graphic part in this case is a 3D one. The beauty of this logo is that it is simple. It’s easy to reproduce. But thats about it. I have more things to say that are not in its favour. The problem with 3D logos that play with the concept of positive and negative space is that often it is un-noticed. And even to experts, it becomes obvious only after spending some time staring at it. So it is not surprising that many failed to notice the H that is . . . → Read More: The new Hero Moto Cop (Hero Honda) logo |
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