How do you define the term “usability” in the context of Indian IT companies? It has gained several meanings over the years there by clubbing non-usability related stuff like development as part of the UCD groups.

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”

I know I should have posted this long back, but didn’t had time to post as I was enjoying my fatherhood with my wife and the new born!

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.

Something that I had wished for long is now a reality! I can now edit CSS live in Internet Explorer. The feature that was available only in Firefox. Isn’t that cool!!

CSS VISTA
CSSVista is a free Windows application for web developers which lets you edit your CSS code live in both Internet Explorer and Firefox simultaneously.