A few months ago, I was on a flight from Bangalore back home to Bombay after some RadioVeRVe work. When the plane took off, the usual seatbelt/tray table announcement was broadcast. The same message was announced again just before touchdown. And this was when I noticed a something weird.

I’m used to seeing flight attendants walking up and down the aisles checking passengers before and after the tray table/seat belt message had been broad cast. So used to seeing them that just barely realised what web designers and flight attendants have in common.

In many user tests, I’ve noticed that people completely disregard hints while filling in forms. So when validating a form you need to draw attention to the specific field(s) that they missed out. On board the plane, the exact same thing was happening. A few passengers completely disregarded the tray table/seat-belt announcement. The flight attendants had to go up and down the aisles and “validate” that the passengers had moved their tray tables to the upright position and fastened their seat belts.

How many times do we ignore messages that could actually help us instead of hinder us? Next time you notice a helpful hint, pay attention. It might just save your life!

Inspiration is good. But the recent explosion of CSS and web design galleries has me spending valuable time looking through half a dozen sites looking for the latest design trends and new ideas. I am actually overloaded with inspiration!

Now I’ve heard of Information Anxiety. It refers to stress caused by the an overload or lack of information. I think the same applies to inspiration. So I’ve taken the definition of Information overload from Usability First and just replaced the word information with inspiration .

Inspiration Anxiety: Stress caused by the inability to access or understand the inspiration you need, caused by inspiration overload, lack of clear organization to inspiration, insufficient inspiration, excessively difficult presentation of inspiration, etc.

From the Microsoft Design Center culture page.

What makes the iPod so compelling? It’s a beautiful and sensual consumer product, and Apple’s attention to the out-of-box and multi-channel experiences make its value much greater than the sum of its parts. But Apple also gave customers the iTunes Music Store. The music store, combined with the other innovations, made the iPod a platform that saved time and enabled choice. It was a series of innovations borne of product innovation, supply chain optimization, customer experience, service, and design, and much like the simple human-machine interfaces of the late 80s and early 90s, the iPod is a delightful way to interface with technology.

No mention of the Zune. Says alot about the designers in Microsoft!

Of course the next paragraph is about the XBox360.

I’m sorry. I couldn’t resist this. After all it is an “event”.

Original poster from here. Go get them!

I was shocked to hear Micheal Crichton passed away at age 66. I never would have guessed he was that old or that sick.

The guy was one of my favourite authors. Sure, he wrote a few clunkers if you’d compare them to other Science Fiction novels, but I think he knew exactly what the Hollywood studios were looking for. You can’t deny that each of his books had excellent a good premise. Though they were based on science, only about 5-10 pages in each of his books dwelled on the actual explanation. The rest had things being blown up/ eaten, bleeding, dying, shape-shifting, getting colder or evolving. Although they did all those things with strict adherence to reality/history/physics. I believe this because of all the references that he would include behind every novel

Bottom-line: His books were good, not bad. There’s plenty of worse crap out there (ahem… Chetan Bhagat). Crichton was a best-seller. End of story. He will be missed.