Why redesign a Website that works perfectly?

‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ goes a famous saying. When I was chatting with someone in office a few days back, we had a conversation around the changing User Interfaces and User Experiences in the modern applications (commonly called as the UI/UX in Tech lingo). The conversation was more focused on why customers resist change and are comfortable with the older UI however crappy it might be. A small conversation it was, but triggered thoughts in me as I had been pondering around this point in the recent past.

If you are in India, there is a good probability that you would have used IRCTC website at least once in the recent past to book train tickets. CRIS (Centre for Railway Information Systems) took a major initiative to revamp the IRCTC booking website and make the website feature rich and improve the User Experience. It was well known that older website was not so great, but it got the job done and people got used to it. The newer website took some time to get used to and more importantly there was only one key question around, ‘Where do I Login?’ For some reason, IRCTC decided to focus on new bookings and threw up the journey details right at the centre of the page and Login went somewhere into some menu. For a lot of people who just wanted to cancel the tickets, they were not able to find the Login and had a horrid time. The earlier website started with a Login.  It might have been heavily inspired by the Redbus/Makemytrip websites, but the purpose is not the same. Today they have kept a red coloured Login button right at the top. But why change something that was working perfect?

When you design a new webpage or website, UI/UX takes the precedence. The impression you create, the placement of information and buttons, the fluidity and the navigation matters. But when you already have a solid user base who is comfortable with the interface, it is necessary to think much before changing the way things work.

Cricinfo has been another example in the recent past. Cricinfo has been a goto website for any cricket lover for a long time since we started tracking matches on the web. Famously their servers crashed the day Sachin scored the first double century in ODI. That’s the traffic they had. Ever since, CricBuzz came into picture with increased focus on Mobile App, a lot of users went switching over. Cricinfo decided it was time to revamp the website to fit into any gadget and became increasingly cluttered. It took more time to open the website, the commentary often doesn’t loads properly. Comments in the articles were one of my favourite features. There were only a handful of readers, but you knew most of them and looked forward to reading their perspective. Cricinfo decides that the volumes are not enough. When I tried to reach out, I get a reply that I can still comment on Facebook. Why move from a smaller intelligent sect to a larger garbage sect? There goes the user experience! The only good thing with Cricinfo now is that they still have quality reports from Sidharth Monga, Andrew Miller, Daniel Bretig, George Dobell and the likes.

More often than not, companies design new websites and believe that the features are intuitive enough for the user to figure out on their own. Around 2 years back, Airtel revamped their website with a lot of focus on material design and fresh icons. Earlier, there was a clear ‘Login’ button available and I was lost for a few weeks as to where it has gone. Only when someone randomly told me that they have replaced the wording to a person Icon, I realized that it is still in the same old place.

Quora is another example of consistently changing UI. The prime components of Quora is quite simple – Questions, Answers, Topics, Upvote, Downvote, Share, Search. The UI team are an enthusiastic bunch who cannot retain the design for a few months together. They move buttons from one place to another, replace words with icons, bring new icons and get back to word. Interestingly there a few questions in Quora itself as to why the platform has got such inconsistent UI.

Gmail has a good example of how to alter the User Interface without affecting the User Experience. They provide a guided tour when they get into a new interface. They still enable you to retain the older version for sometime before it is scrapped. And the core of the design remains the same. The wordings still remain the same and most of the times are the same place. You don’t suddenly start searching for old features.

Quite often, the software providers allow you to use the older version for a longer timeframe even after launching a new interface. The issue is that they donot let you flow smoothly from the older interface to the newer one. They don’t provide you with guided tours or guided trainings. And in most cases, the revamp is hard to adapt too.

While the purpose of revamping the UI will be to increase adoption and satisfy the user community, more often than not, it leads to the opposite.

Happy Reading!

iOS (3) vs Android (2.3) - My Views!

Hi Guys,

It has been two days since I started using my new phone – HTC Explorer.

It has paved way for me to use Android – Gingerbread (V2.3) in particular.

After having used my iPod Touch 2G for quite a long time, let me give you a little amateurish view of iOS vs Android.

Before starting, let me be clear. My iPod was not updatable beyond iOS 3. Also I have been using Android for 2 days (not even have I tested lot of parameters). So, if you people want a very professional review, I request you to read another review from a tech geek.

The first and foremost thing was I felt Android to be much user friendly than iOS. In my iPod, I had to use iTunes for everything. Copying songs, installing games, applications everything needed iTunes. Without iTunes the instrument was just useless (particularly when there was no Wi-Fi).

Android offered me a large space to get applications. I can use internet in lot of ways. It allows Internet to access from the system directly which offers more scope for people who don’t have Wi-Fi. I can easily install Apps and delete them at will. In iOS for deleting apps, you need iTunes. If something is installed in iPod then nothing can be done.

As far as Applications are concerned, I think most of the commonly used applications are developed for both the OS. I’m able to see most of the Apps in both the Playstore and iStore. So, can’t classify more on Applications.

Transferring of data is much easy in Android. It allows data to be transferred from phone to memory card easily. In iPod transferring of data can be one hell of a job, particularly I have faced big headaches with photo sharing and eventually I didn’t even have photos.

On the basis of Ease of Use, I would vote for iPod, though in Android a lot depends on the phone manufacturer. The look and feel in iPod in itself would make us comfortable. Everything was obvious with little options in iPod, whereas here I need to search for things and learning can be a bit difficult.

The look, feel and touch of iPod were great. But it more of a closed environment where you needed iTunes for everything, particularly without Wi-Fi things was terrible. Though, with Wi-Fi, things would have been different. I still remember the awkward moment when I updated from iOS 2 to iOS 3 and everything was wiped clean. I was so happy that the iPod didn’t support iOS 4. Though the advantage is that everything is uniform since all the products are manufactured by Apple and user interface is same everywhere.

Android is more comfortable. It is more user-friendly and it allows us to explore easily. Access to internet through a PC is one good feature. The way it allows to move through Apps and easy installation and removal of Apps makes it a great gadget. To install many Apps you need internal memory and it depends on phone and much of the interface and features will depend on the phone manufacturer. So, it is better to analyze the phone well before buying.

Happy Reading!!!

Power of Mobile Internet in India!

Hi Guys,

Do you use mobile phone to access internet? If your answer is yes, then you contribute to one half of Internet population in India. Yes, one half of Indians use mobile phones to access internet. It was 2% in January 2009 and in a span of 3 years it has become 48% in April 2012. Maybe, by this time it would have crossed 50%

Most of the times, I browse through PC, but mobile has been a great companion for me. Mobile Internet users can be broadly classified into two types. The first one comprises of people who do not have access to PC or broadband or who feel broadband is expensive (a survey shows that Indian people are ready to spend Rs. 50 per month on an average). The second category is people, who use mobile to browse while travelling or not being at home. I belong to the second category.

Mobile Internet offers great tariffs. There are packages for 1 day, 3 days, 1 week, 1 month, 2 months, etc depending on service providers. So, whenever I am travelling I activate the 1 day pack for which I will ultimately spend very less. The main purpose I would need internet while travelling is to check mails, to access Facebook and to see any other important site. Many of my friends who stay outside use mobile phones as modem. They use monthly packs and it is both cheap and good enough for browsing.

Two years back, when I started using Internet on mobile, the speed was very low and connection was very poor. At many places, the towers won’t support EDGE (which is an advanced version of GPRS which enables high speed). These days the speeds have improved a lot (am speaking of 2G technology) and so have the infrastructure.

A month back, the modem in my home went berserk and hence I was not able to use broadband. I used my mobile as a modem and it was very handy.  The speed was not great, but it was good enough to browse and download basic stuffs. I was amazed to see speeds of 200 Kbps which is one tenth of my broadband speed.

If we are able to get such good speeds in 2G, then surely 3G would be superb. There are lot of issues with infrastructure and tariff. But remember that it is just blooming. Recently tariffs have been slashed hard. Earlier I had a doubt whether 3G will be successful in India. But in 2 years time, I think lot of people will start using 3G.

With lot of websites becoming mobile friendly (even my blog is mobile friendly – set so in blogger settings) and increase in sales of smart phones, I think browsing in Mobile would be as good as browsing in PC. With decrease in costs of smart phones and improvement in Infrastructure of service providers, definitely India is all set to become a Mobile Browsing country.

This post is written for Internet is Fun Conest (http://www.vodafone.in/fun) on Indiblogger. Indibloggers, please vote for my post at this page

Happy Reading!!!

Working of Nitrous Oxide boosters in a car!

Hi Guys,

A few days ago I was hearing podcast in my iPod about ‘How Nitrous oxide boosters work?’ released by ‘How stuff works’ website. I’ve seen Nitrous Oxide Boosters in few games and movies including Need for Speed (game), Dhoom, Fast and the Furious (movies). I have never thought about the technology inside that. I was thinking that Nitrous Oxide is a fuel and it has high combustion rate or something like sort of that. But the reality was much more amazing.

Nitrous Oxide cylinders inside a car

Basically there are two theories behind the boost.

1st Theory

Nitrous Oxide (N₂O) splits into Nitrogen and Oxygen at 300 degree Celsius. Therefore a ½ mole of oxygen is introduced. Air consist 21% oxygen and this addition makes it as 33%. This enrichment of oxygen provides more burning of fuel and hence higher power emission and higher speed.

2nd Theory

Nitrous Oxide has some other effect too. It provides a significant cooling to the intake air. Decrease in temperature increases the air’s density, which means more oxygen will be present in the intake air.

In both the theories, more oxygen is taken inside the cylinder and hence more burning takes place. This can be imagined with the candle experiment we studied long ago. Keep a burning candle inside a closed container. It burns until oxygen is present and then turns off. If there is more oxygen, it would burn for more time. Nitrous Oxide increases the amount of oxygen.

NOS system for a car

Disadvantage of Nitrous Oxide System

Nitrous oxide is very bulky and we need a lot of Nitrous Oxide for the engine. Normally the Nitrous Oxide is compressed and stored as a liquid. Still then, it occupies a large amount of space. Therefore a car can carry only a few minutes of Nitrous Oxide and the driver must use it carefully. It’s normally activated using a button (you must have seen it if you have seen race movies like Fast and the Furious).

Another disadvantage is that, due to large amount of release of Oxygen more pressure is applied and the engine’s cylinder may be damaged. Nitrous Oxide is not allowed legally by transport organizations. Even the major racing groups have banned usage of Nitrous oxide in their races.

Nitrous is mainly produced by Nitrous Oxide Systems (NOS) and hence is also known as NOS.

External Links

How Stuff Works: How does nitrous oxide help an engine perform better?

Nitrous- Wikipedia

Happy Reading!!!

P.S: The image used is the nitrous oxide boosters fitted in a Volvo concept car. Image credit belong to Volvo and Google

Some Interesting Softwares!

Hi guys,

A few days ago, I came across interesting software known as ‘Everything’. It was very useful software. I thought of sharing information about few softwares which I have found useful.

Everything

This is a Search tool. How many of you have been frustrated by using Search software provided by Microsoft? Then this software is for you. It takes a few seconds to Search any file/folder you want. It will search the whole hard disk in a few seconds unlike Windows Search which will take hours to search. Another chief advantage is that the software is Portable and occupies less space (1.66 MB). You can download this software at

http://www.voidtools.com

DoPDF

This is very useful software that converts your documents, presentations or any other office documents into pdf files. After installing the software you can convert the documents by going to print option. There you need to send the documents to doPDF and the documents will get converted into pdf files. The chief advantage is that it has no page limits like other ‘pdf converter’ softwares. You can download this software at

http://www.dopdf.com/download.php

DAP (Download Accelerator plus)

It is a Download Managing software, which I came to know from my friend a few months ago. Many of you would know and use different download managers. DAP has many other features of which I find Speedbit Video Downloader most useful. You will find a lot of interesting Videos on YouTube and many other sites, but you will not be able to download them. This feature comes handy then. A toolbar will attach to your main browser when you install DAP. Whenever you see a video, you can use the ‘Download Video’ icon to download the video from the respective site.

http://www.speedbit.com/downloads/

Speedbit Toolbar in my browser (Firefox)

Picasa

It’s a Photo Editing Software provided by Google. I have been using this software for a long time. If you don’t know much about photo editing, then you can do the basic adjustments (like red eye detection, light adjustments, etc) in Picasa. You can use the Face Detection to tag your friends in the photo. More than that, you can upload the photos to Picasa Web Albums easily. It has lot more attractive features. Find it yourself. You can download the software at

http://picasa.google.com/

VLC Media Player

It’s a Media player as the name suggests. It’s the best player for playing Videos, as far as I know. It is easy to handle this software. It supports video files of all formats. You can control the volume to a wide range (from 0 to 400%). The file size is also very less. You can download at

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Hope these softwares are useful for you. If you know any useful softwares, please post them in the Comments column, so that all the readers can use them.

Happy Reading!!!