Calling all designers, developers, information architects, project managers, writers, editors, marketers, and everyone else who makes websites. It is time once again to pool our information so as to begin sketching a true picture of the way our profession is practiced worldwide.

Please take the survey and encourage your friends and colleagues who make websites to do likewise. The world is watching.

Weekend is the time I normally spend with my family. But past weekend, I decided to go for a trek to Mulshi (some 35 Kms from Pune) with my collegues. On reaching Mulshi, we thought of taking the other route where we had to cross a small waterfall.

We started climbing the rocks, helping each other out on our way up. Just then, I placed my foot on one of the rock which was a bit slippery. I lost my balance and fell straight on my face! The fall was so bad that it created a 1/2 inch cut on my upper lip. I was immediately taken to the hospital where I received 10 stitches on my upper lip.

But now that I am back, sharing with you some of the pictures I took while on our way to Mulshi.

It’s always difficult to gauge the quality of UCD projects other companies get. One feels let down when they start comparing themselves with their counterparts in other companies. But the ground reality might be different!

Following are the questions I’d like to have answers to  to clear the misconception about “User Experience Design” group.

• How do other companies preach usability in their organization?
• What kind of projects to they get?
• Do they get a complete life cycle projects?
• Do a usability group in an Indian IT companies restrict themselves to User Research and Analysis and pass on the prototype development process to some other group within the company.
• Do they hire people having a good knowledge of usability or do they hire the ones with proficiencies in HTML/CSS/Flash, etc… and ask them to do certain usability related tasks
• Do they have a separate web development team that looks into development and is in no way related to the usability aspects of the project?

Answers to these questions would solve many misconceptions people have pertaining to a “Usability Group”

We named her TWISHA which means “BRIGHT”. Born on 23rd of July, she’s a cusp between Cancer and Leo zodiac signs.

She’s so adorable that I could not stop my self from taking pictures of her as I did not want to miss out on any of her expressions.

I have dedicated an Album for her which I update every week.

Had an amazing experience this weekend at Karjat where we, as a team, volunteered for Habitat for Humanity foundation. Considering we were on a team outing, this was an excellent team building exercise where teams from Hyderabad, Chennai and Pune help build houses for the poor (people below the poverty line).

We started our journey on Friday morning. The bus was to pick us up at 8.30 am but it was delayed as other guys travelling from Hyderabad reached late. Our accommodation was handled by Prakruti Farms which is 80kms drive from Mumbai. The place is surrounded by hills and beautiful landscaped gardens. We relaxed ourselves at the farm and immediately headed for the site visit to a village. The village was a site to see. I had never seen a village so beautiful, so pure and so clean, surrounded by picturesque landscapes and skyscapes. The villagers were very welcoming. One of my collegue Debabrata mentioned during our team interaction that in our normal life, the poeple from far off villages come to city and builds houses for us, but this one was a different experience. This time around, the guys from the city were going to the villages to build houses for the poor.

I must say, the village was so clean with no filth around. It looked as if it was some kind of a set erected for some film shooting. I also had some opportunity to try my hands on photography and was quite happy with the results.

In all, it was a wonderful experience. My sincere thanks to Habitat for making villages a better place to live.

View the photographs from the visit

Visit Kollermedia’s Resource

My friend Bhooshan returned from his Europe tour recently. The photographs he clicked were simply breath taking and worth watching!

View the complete collection from Bhooshan’s Europe tour

Hope there would be no further breaks

Yahoo! released their new widget application Konfabulator which emulates the Dashboard in Mac OS X.

Check it out for yourself!