An Afternoon with Design
ACM SIGCHI August 2006 Meet
Hosted at Microsoft Research India

Kentaro Toyama (MSRI : Microsoft Research India) presented a brief overview of TEM (Technology for Emerging Markets). He believes that personal insights of a designer is more important than the design process.

Indrani Medhi talked about a Text- Free UI. This project was about a Text Free UI targetted at Servant Maids looking for jobs in Bangalore. She facilitated iterative tests/prototypes with 35 participants, using a Tablet PC and a Stylus.

Sean Blagsvedt (who incidentally designed the cool interiors of MS campus) talked about “Research to Prototyping to Productizing” He believes that the Interface shouls make the user look good ( to his/her social circle / to people who are important to users). I violently agree with him.

Geetha Narayanan from Srishti talked abour Design & Education. This kinda went “Super Kaput”, atleast for me.

Udai Singh Pawar talked about his research on “Multi-mouse for Education”. Multiple students share a single computer in rural India. He shared his observations of how kids behave in this a scenario when multiple mice are used by multiple students on the same screen. This idea was kinda interesting. I could see some analogies with multi player games.

A small note on MSRI Campus : I kinda like the interior design & lighting at the campus. The lighting was better after Sundown. Some indian ethnic design elements were also used in a subtle manner.