Me … A Geek … No way!!

The trip meter read 749! After having covered the last and final stretch wrestling for an hour in Bangalore traffic and running out of gas too in the process, the rider got down and glanced at Madonna.

She looked worn out. The stallions had a thick layer of dust over them. The finger wraps bought just a week back had been rendered useless with threads hanging at the ends. The past three days had served him a heady concoction of … loads of history and … rips …. and cruises … but luckily no bruises. Not to forget, the 40 odd nomads he met during the event. There were a lot of names he had heard and it felt gratifying not just giving faces to those names but also knowing them a lot more.

The annual BN meet at Hampi will be etched in his memory for long. It was only a few months back that he came across this bikers club and had been following the mails since then. Atypical of the conventional club culture, BikeNomads are a tribe who graduated beyond bikes long back. A few heated discussions every now and then is a given but more emphasis is on the camaraderie. He looks forward to meeting all the nomads again as soon as possible!

Travelogue (to the best of his memory)

0415: Reached Forum Mall which was the meeting point for folks riding out of South Bangalore

0500: Left Forum after having waited a bit longer than planned. The entire gang was to sync up at Neelamangala crossing (NH-4, ~35 kilometers outside Bangalore) and then ride together.

0625: 12 engines began to make noise and got back on NH-4 one by one, in the pre-decided formation.

[ Of all the rules to be followed, he had memorized the best worded one - "Nobody overtakes spot and sweep never overtakes any one." ]

1000: The 175 km stretch of flawless tarmac ensured that the nomads were cooling their heels at Reliance A1 at Chitradurga.

[ In between, a staple breakfast of idlis, tasty chutney and not so tasty sambhar was done somewhere near Sira.Before that, yours truly had goofed up and taken a diversion into Tumkur. After some 'Opposite To' and 'Next To' from the folks there, he was able to spot the shiny tarmac and was delighted but only till he realized that the fellow nomads were nowhere to be seen.

Saddened by this revelation, he thought the ride would be lonely and that he had let down the entire clan of BNers from Bangalore

'Just Ride' was the mantra he stuck to and after going full throttle for nearly 50kms, he finally spotted the clan. Moments later, the halt for breakfast happened. ]

1020: NH-4 gave way to NH-13. It was like an Angel to Demon transformation. The ~150kms to Hospet was killing but it made him realize the importance of hand-signals. They acted as life savers and he made sure he too gave them to warn the nomad behind him.

1430: A few long pit stops on the way and maneuvering through Hospet caused some delay. Checked in at Mayura Bhuvaneshwari, Kamalapura ( a small town just on the outskirts of Hampi). Met Dr. Pritvhi for the first time and was bowled over by his spirit.

[ The hotel offered pretty decent ambiance. Both in terms of food and lodging. It was airy and green and also clean. Not heavy on the pocket either. A South Indian thali and chilled beer did the trick. He was in no mood to rest. The gang from Bombay/Pune/Hyd was still on the road. Met GR (BN veteran from Hyd) at the hotel for the first time. ]

1630: Leaving the couples behind, the remaining nomads set forth to explore Hampi (which btw is a UNESCO Heritage site).

[ The landscape mesmerized him. It was as he had imagined. Hues of brown with a generous dose of green. Giant monoliths in the backdrop and winding dusty roads. Having rested their steeds at Hampi Bazar, the nomads began to admire the beauty of the once prosperous capital of the Vijayanagara kingdom. Vasanth, the unofficial guide was never at a loss of words for any site that came into view. The moon began to rise and after munching on some snacks, they geared up for what yours truly was awaiting - 'The Spooky Ride'. As true xplorers, they walked through the ruins and also did a short stretch with the headlights off. The darkness was engulfing. It was pure fun! ]

2000: Back at the Hotel.

[ A few nomads (Dr. Arunob and Prasad) from Mumbai were in. The topics of discussion varied from bike modifications to the next days plan to ..... It continued over snacks/beer/dinner. A lot of nomads then went on a ride to a nearby lake. He missed it but is sure it must have been fun. ]

[ The plan was to take a guided tour of Hampi but considering the fact that the Mumbai/Pune gang had arrived only around mid-night and that there was a whole bunch which had slept in the wee hours, the plan did not materialize. Met Capt. Nandu over breakfast. Another occasion to be bowled over! Met Vibhu and Navendu and tried to recollect the last mail I had read from them btw, BN is Vibhu's brainchild ]

1000: The unofficial guide from Day 1, Vasanth became the torch bearer again and did a marvelous job of it. The nomads visited umpteen sites – Queens Bath, Underground Shiva Temple, Lotus Mahal, Elephant Cave, Sister Rock … just to name a few. The large group split into smaller ones and continued the exploration.

1500: It was time to be back at the hotel after lunch at Hampi Street and purchasing some souvenirs.

1530: The steeds lined in formation. Click … Click. Riders on the steeds … Click Click

1610: The nomads, all of them, rode to Vitthala Temple where the bikes were lined in formation against the backdrop of pillars. Click … Click … Click n a few more Clicks! Took some time before the shots were okay-ed

1700: Inside the Vitthala temple. The famous Hampi chariot rested here. Legend has that the pillars of this temple emit musical notes but sadly were been closed for public.

1730: On the banks of the Tungbhadra River. Mayank rides up and down the tattered terrain on his beast.

1900: Chin-wagging at the Hotel lobby over tea.

1915: The introductions start, in this format – “Hi, My name is X and I am from Y”. The remaining imputs were from fellow nomads. It was a great way to learn about the veterans and also everyone else.

2130: BN sticker distribution

2200: Dinner and bonfire which i heard someone say was actually ‘gone’-fire. It did not last long despite desperate effort from folks.

2315: Goodbyes were exchanged and ‘most’ of the nomads retired to bed.

[ Time to bid adieu to Hampi had come. The last two days had passed in a jiffy. Most of the Mum-bhai/Pune gang had left early morning. ]

0830: A quick poll at the breakfast table showed that most of the Bangalore nomads wanted to see the Tungabhadra Dam. This meant a detour of a few kilometers but then it was a unanimous decision. Although the ‘Love’ for the damn … errr … dam wasn’t present in everyone’s eyes

1000: What lay in store on way to the Dam was heavy traffic. Trucks lined on both sides of the road with hardly any space for the steeds to squeeze through. He being at the edge of the bridge was asked to take to the 1 foot high sidewalk. The 100m sidewalk ride enthralled him no end considering that while everyone else on the road stood still, this caravan of 13 bikes or so just rode past

1130: Sachin, the local nomad was now the guide and gave some geography/history lessons. After tanking up at Hospet, the nomads set out for the journey ahead.

1500: Disciplined riding and a few short-lived pit stops ensured that the gang was ordering lunch at Reliance A1 at Chitradurga.

1600: On NH-4 again. Vrooom … Vrooooom … Vrooooooooooooom! Re-established the fact that Madonna is meant to cruise not rip. The needle never went past 115.

1900: At Neelamangala Junction. Three nomads re-group. Where are the rest? If only the direction would have been ‘right’ than straight.

2030: Back to square one. The satisfaction in his smile was conspicuous!

You need some proof of the good time he had?

Linking Harshad Sharma’s PhotoSet, the ace nomad clickr at flickr

May the rides never end. Thanks to all those who made it happen!!

This weekend(Read today and tomorrow) will see another edition of BarCamp being organized at IIM, Bangalore. This is the 5th in Bangalore and if I am not mistaken the 3rd this year in the city.

As mentioned here, I attended the last one but was not particularly thrilled with the experience. The collectives format seemed like a logical step forward in that it was supposed to reduce some degree of chaos but in the end, the effect was the opposite. Nonetheless, I met a lot of folks(in the unconference and friends in the campus) and had a reasonably good time. But somehow that wasn’t enough for me to really look forward to the next edition.

After discussing with a colleague at work, we decided to volunteer for the next one. Unfortunately, all I could do in this direction was joining the mailing list and all my dear colleague did was join the mailing list and send a couple of mails. My contribution to this event has been zilch. There are reasons for the same but I would have loved to contribute. I am not the one relying on excuses to defend my case, so none are coming forth.

Anyways, the last 2 weeks or so (since the registration for this camp opened) have seen a lot of activity on w3 regarding the event. Apart from the numerous run-of-the-mill posts, there have been a few where authors have critically analyzed what is going wrong (if I may say so) as far as BCB is concerned and how it might be improved upon. Of these, folks who are currently involved with the organization of the camp have defended their case whereas other veterans firmly stand by the observation of BCB losing its ground.

Ashish from pluggd.in has done the balancing act (according to me) and I agree to most of what is said here.

Whatever said and done, any sort of event is an attempt by the organizers to try and make the attendees/participants have a good time. If it is a college fest, more emphasis is on the fun part. In a corporate/business setting, networking is where the focus is. And as far as barcamps go, it is a mix of the two. And frankly speaking, scaling up is not an easy task … what with the footfall skyrocketing in the last edition. I hope things get better this time.

Generally, ‘vote of thanks’ is reserved as the last item in any MoC’s agenda but I would rather thank the organizers now than later, for their continued enthusiasm and efforts.

In spite of my calendar teeming with activities today, I surely will be there, albeit for a small duration.

See you all then

The end user experience, according to me is tantamount to any other effort that goes into shipping a product – Software or otherwise. It is interesting to note how businesses/products across the world alleviate some pain point in the customers life.

But, what good is a product that in spite of being feature rich, is too complicated to use ?

With the advent of several technologies and webify-ing of services, this aspect of product development/service offering has taken even serious proportions. UX aka User Xperience or Usability is what I am referring to.

I was at the World Usability Day held at NIAS (IISc, Bangalore) on the 5th of this month. Thanks to the volunteers and the sponsors, the event was neatly done with no hassles whatsoever. The only bottleneck was reaching the venue, the credit for which goes to Bangalore traffic!

The most interesting session was the ACID test results for the website which is used to book tickets for Indian trains. Ironically this domain belongs to the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) and not the Indian Railways, which explains the absence of the Railways logo.

Before I proceed, let me put to rest some widely spread misconceptions. In software parlance, a developer and a designer are often depicted as two mutually exclusive entities and at war with each other. But my take is that any developer with a wee bit of aesthetic ability would be a combo asset to any organization. If there has to be a distinct demarcation of roles, such a developer would work very well in tandem with a designer.

Anyways, let me get back to the topic at hand. Besides other parameters, the ACID test summarized irctc.co.in as follows:-

• Highly useful (the pain-point it addresses i.e. booking tickets without standing in a queue, is a sure winner)
• Highly un-usable (the ease with which the task of booking a ticket is achieved)

The fact that registration is a pre-requisite for booking tickets at this website was not very clear in the first place. But the real problems surfaced only after one logged in. I will not get into details (the confusion surrounding i-ticket and e-ticket) here but present a simple scenario where the user wants to book tickets from, say Bangalore to Chennai. The From/To/Date/Class/Ticket Type are entered accordingly and the user clicks on ‘Find Trains’ expecting … well not what follows:-

That is as cryptic as an error message could get. The novice user wonders where the mistake happened. The From and To fields are populated according to station codes

The image next to the From and To fields has to be clicked to search station codes which in itself is a long and confusing operation (I will later in this post show how that can be made seamless and extremely intuitive)

In order to fill the To and From (we are still at To/From … those are the first of fields to be keyed in), the following navigation is required.

The snapshots follow:-

Step 1 – Hovering the mouse over the image shows the following ‘alt’

Steps 2, 3 and 4

Step 5 – The FROM field is populated.

Now, repeat the above for ‘To’ field

I have been using irctc.co.in for quite sometime now and have got used to this user experience. Imagine the difficulty faced by a first-time user.

What follows is not rocket science although there’s some amount of jargon involved. AJAX has been around for long and this might be probably the most primitive of applications ever written. But that is not the point. The user experience, which is of prime importance, improves manifolds.

The table above shows that 4 clicks are required to populate each ‘TO’ and ‘FROM’ field. The technique depicted below reduces this to just 1.

What say ?

What gets populated in the example above is ‘SBC’ which the station code. The script could be modified to show the station name as well.

[ I doubt if anyone would be interested in the code. Just in case you are, please leave a comment and I'll be more than happy to share ]

Now, here is some food for thought.

1. Why has design not been the focus and why is that technology is where most of the action happens? NID/NIFT are the only names that come to my mind when I think of education in this field in India.
2. There are umpteen successfully implemented live solutions available for online ticket booking. Why does the Government of India not take a cue from them. Is it pure apathy?
3. Am I a designer or a developer?

Perchance, I met an ex-employee of irctc and some probing revealed that the state of affairs is indeed sad. The people aren’t qualified enough and are also not paid well. That partly answers question 2.

This has been my longest post till date. Hope it serves some purpose!