This report resulted in the development of the Action Office system by Herman Miller. It is still relevant and on sale today, 47 years after the report was published. Three major contributions of this system to the office space as we know it today are personal+accessible spaces, vertical storage and the felt pin [...]]]>

This report resulted in the development of the Action Office system by Herman Miller. It is still relevant and on sale today, 47 years after the report was published. Three major contributions of this system to the office space as we know it today are personal+accessible spaces, vertical storage and the felt pin up board. The cubical is a result of the first one and it has been bastardized to it’s current form over the years. The original proposal was to keep the angles of the walls at 120 degrees to encourage collaboration when needed. Here are some of the key insights that the research established. Most still relevant today:

• The quantity of information is overwhelming. There is duplication of effort both in creating and consuming it. Information is out of date very quickly. The consideration of flow of information is imperative in the design of the office.
• Information is power. Hierarchy of an organization determines where the most important information is held – at the top or distributed.
• The office is a mind oriented living space. The mind can focus on 7 units at a time plus minus 2.
• An office with no relevant visual display deprives the human performer of a spectacular recall tool – the human eye as a receptor for the mind. Exhausted display is invisible.
• Somewhat rare in offices now is the person who has only one job, one thing to do. Typically we have multi-responsibilities which have to be treated separately.
• Figuring out the right way to orient people talking to each other is important. Too close and it is uncomfortable and strained. Too far and they’re orally alienated.
• The seated working position is an unfortunate outcome of the office lifestyle. Working in a standing position improves productivity and energy within the individual and the space.
• Technology is best implemented in an office if it serves to improve communication systems. If it acts in a silo or overburdens people with information, it is not doing it’s job.
• Change cannot be pushed up from below. It has to be a practice and belief of leaders.

See the action office furniture system by Herman Miller here.

Designed to be tamper proof, [...]]]> How often have you been troubled by auto rickshaw drivers in India? Excessive fare, tampered meters, unruly drivers – all seem to dampen spirits of residents and tourists alike. No fear, for hope is here! The A-Rix will solve all these troubles!

Designed to be tamper proof, this digital fare meter will completely eliminate the need for haggling for fares. Powered by a GPS chip that tremendously increases accuracy over traditional mechanical methods, the A-Rix can even display additional information such as the name of the area you are in and the road you are travelling on. The driver’s life is also made easier to a certain extent – people will not question his meter’s accuracy and the fare calculation automatically increases during night time.

The A-Rix does not require any additional framework and easily integrates into the existing auto framework. The big green light at the rear side aids the waiting passenger to easily identify if an auto is already taken or not. This was designed for the Indian auto rickshaw segment but can be easily extended into other countries and other vehicles. The interface of the meter is designed to be easily readable during both day and night. The features of the A-Rix are below:

Video Courtesy: Rohit Bhat

This can be taken up as a drive by the local authorities to equip all autos with this device. Inquiries for commercialization are welcome. Please email sidv@me.com

UPDATE: A-Rix got featured on Yanko Design! Here’s the link.

Press Coverage: MyBangalore

Also an article on Bangalore Mirror - 

A-Rix – Auto Rickshaw Meter by Siddharth Vanchinathan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at sidv.co.

User interfaces are everywhere. From the newspaper you read in the morning, checking emails at office, dispensing coffee, visiting a hospital, even your alarm clock. Good user interfaces, well that’s something else!

Imagine [...]]]> It’s been a while since I wrote something on design. I have been gathering my thoughts recently and this is the result.

User interfaces are everywhere. From the newspaper you read in the morning, checking emails at office, dispensing coffee, visiting a hospital, even your alarm clock. Good user interfaces, well that’s something else!

Imagine for a moment that you’re an alien from Mars approaching Earth to conquer it. You walk out from your spaceship and find something on the ground that you can hold in your hands. Suddenly, it starts emitting a shrill noise, and with the fright you drop  it thinking it’s a weapon or worse, a bomb. It falls to the ground, but the shrill sound doesn’t stop. It does look pretty harmless though, so you pick it up. You examine it and you find something that is protuding out. You press it down and the alarm clock that you are holding in your hands goes silent. Obviously, since you haven’t been introduced to the context of a clock, you have no clue whatsoever what a “circular face with some writings” with two “hands” makes a clock. But you also need to be introduced to the context of the button on top of the clock that turns off the alarm. Without that knowledge you would have no idea of how to turn it off.

Same goes for all the other physical and virtual objects we interact with everyday. It is the endeavour of us designers to make our life difficult in order to make the object simple and easy to use for the user. Now what defines “simple and easy?”. The interface should be simple enough to be understood by your Mom and easy enough to not require a manual to use. This is the greatest usability test one can try. Before releasing a design or uploading a website, show it to your mom and ask her what she thinks of it. Can she use it within 5 minutes of your introducing her to it?  This is something I keep in mind whenever I design and it is my constant endeavour to simplify. That’s not always the easiest thing to do, and sometimes functionality comes in the way. And then you have to compromise one for the other.

Let me take an example. My mom had her first email account on Rediff. She was quite used to that interface and even when they updated it, she chose to stick on to the old interface. She knows her way around there – from where to find contacts, to where all the email folders are. I recently got her signed up on gmail. She started using it parallely with rediff. After a couple of weeks I happened to notice her using gmail. She was finding it quite difficult to grasp the concept of how the emails are displayed and why do they have a number in brackets next to the ones she had replied to etc. I then told her that it is not a single mail, but gmail shows them as conversations. It was only then that she understood the concept and then she had overcome her fear of using gmail and started using it regularly. I’m sure you have had a similar experience when you use a service for the first time. Unless you have seen a tutorial video or read up some instructions, it is very difficult to get started immediately.

The results of the test are quite intangible and feedback that you can get from it can be very vague at times. Visual/Textual cues are very important to ease navigation around an interface. Use large readable text wherever possible. Use graphical icons to indicate function if the text becomes too much. Avoid clutter and use colours to differentiate various aspects of the interface. Also, efficiency is the key – doing the absolute most possible with what you have.

The tips above are very basic and can be used by anyone who’s making an interface. Special attention to software developers who are often required to do UI work as part of their job. Don’t try to make your life easier by making things complex. Complicate your life to make your user’s life simple.

A lot of talk around Pepsi’s new logo – a lot more negative [...]]]> I was doodling away the other day and I came across a concept that reminded me very much of the Pepsi logo. I quickly modeled it in 3D and here’s the render with the Pepsi colours.

A lot of talk around Pepsi’s new logo – a lot more negative talk than positive. Personally I like the previous logos better, this one is trying really hard to be something else. My concept is just a new way of looking at the old Pepsi logo and could maintain recognition without changing around things too much. Hit me up on the comments on what you think about the logo (Remember, this is not exactly logo-fied completely, it’s simply a render of a 3d model, so a lotta flaws are still present in it).

India:
After I complete [...]]]> As I complete one year of working at ergoform I am faced with a dilemma. To put it simply – I have to do my master’s in design, but should I do it in India or do it abroad? As I look at it both have it’s advantages and disadvantages.

India:
After I complete 2 years of my Master’s, I would work somewhere for a year or two and then I would have a big enough network when I start my own practice. Education is cheap here and most designers do it for the sake of validating their work in the future. People in India don’t usually take you and your work seriously unless you have a degree to prove it. So, I save on time and money but at the same time I probably don’t get a quality education and exposure that I would get abroad.

Abroad:
Here’s where real education happens. Where you are encouraged to explore and go crazy. Spending two years in University will be like a lifetime given the amount of work required, but at the end of it, you emerge a better designer, better manager and a better human. Downside is that I do want to come back to India and settle down. Starting my practice would require a lot more time then – by my calculations atleast 5-6 years more after the degree. I will work abroad to recover my tuition fees for atleast 2 years and by the time I come back to India, I would have lost touch with the people and the places. Hence another 2 years working in India to develop my network all over again.

Arrgghh… dilemma dilemma! Someone have any bright ideas?

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