Going through bank account details, it is easy to know big memorable purchases made, but it’s hard to determine how the little purchases have added up to such a figure. Here comes little spender, this year’s MEX winner.

“Little Spender has been designed with people like Xavier in mind, allowing him to add his expenses through micro experiences on his mobile device. Little Spender’s goal is to enable even the most casual of Little Spenders to see where exactly their hard-earned cash goes every month. Along with a bit of fun and simplicity along the way, they’ll hopefully save a little money too”

I guess, video will give more idea.

I was going from Mumbai airport to my hometown Bhuj (Gujarat). I came across an interesting error message on a flight diplaying computer (image shown below). 

The question is not whether i am able to see those flights, but question comes is, can’t we make a context aware system which recognizes the context and behaves accordingly? I was standing there for 20 mins. and it didn’t change. It showed the same error massage.

Small but i feel an interesting issue to work out !!! isn’t it?

As we had some discussions/comments (more comments i got on gtalk) on “Mumbai Navigator” about the interface, i am posting the flow of the application here. Though the flow i am showing here in not so much into detail, but enough to understand.

lets assume that user has to go from “andheri” to “mulund”. He can enter source and destination in the given column. By clicking on options, it gives you a list of options which you can select. So, here user an select buses and trains to desired soruce and destination. Also, if user wants he can enter a bus number or train name to find the route of that bus or train.

Here, we will assume that user clicks on “find buses”. He will get the list of buses and their approxi. time from “andheri” to “mulund”. he can click on the desired bus to ckeck the route of the bus. As shows i the above image, if user selects “425 ltd” then he will the route of “425 ltd”.

If there are some buses which directly do not go from andheri-mulund, but one has to change the bus, then user can select an option called “buses with 1 change”.

As user selects “buses with 1 change”, in the current scenario he gets the list of buses with 1 change which is “andheri-sakinaka-mulund”. User can select the option and get list of two routes shown in the above image. then user can get the bus numbers by selecting “andheri to sakinaka”.The user flow might seem a bit long, but the data given by client is huge as there are large number of buses in Mumbai with extra large number of station in it.

I am looking for some critics and inputs about the interface. Would love to get feedback about it.

One the step of google, i think there are lots of search engine application design is happening. Recently i heard that google engineers have started their own search engine and they claim that its much faster and accurate than google. Though i do not have screen shots of that, but i have just come across to some interesting search engines.

1. searchcloud

Interesting thing here i found out was, emphasize on the keyword. User can weight their keyword by given options in the website.

As shown in the image, i can give importance to some of the keyword which i like and search it accordingly. I would say an interesting way of looking search engines.

2. cuil

In addition to searchcloud another application i found was Cuil.

Under search column, there is small tag written say 121,617,892,992 web pages. Personally i liked the way they represented the data. Something like gmail says ” you email space is 6.873932930 GB and continuously updating”.

When searching for “interaction design”, in addition to topics related to interaction design, it also suggests some keywords, authors, people related to that domain. So in our case it shows human computer interaction,  usability, design, information architects and many more. I have not used it much, but one of my friend who used it says that interface is good, but search results are not satisfactory.

aaqua is a website for the development of the farmers of India. Currently it serves 3 states of India and expanding more. The basic idea of aaqua is to answer the questions regarding pesticides, soil, weather informations, disease etc of farmers of different regions of the country. I was looking at the website and come across some interesting interaction design issues.

Above image is home page of “aaqua – mini” which says its a mobile version of “aaqua”. After getting inside “aaqua mini”, you can search for any keyword. I just tried searching for pesticides and something popped up like this :

Here i do not understand the significance of leaving the bottom space and giving pagination like 1|2|3|4. It feels like they have not done proper utilization of the space. One more interesting thing i found out is,

Once you open some link which requires registration, you see a red colored statement saying ” warning – you have to login to access this feature” (shown in the above image). This seems very strange, something like it is trying to scare by saying “warning”, you have done some biggest mistake by clicking this link.

Though i appreciate the effort of connecting agricultural experts and farmers which helps them grow better. “aaqua” has been awarded two times.

After a long time, i think !!! Few days back, during a meeting in my office i came accross an application called Mumbai Navigator. Mumbai Navigator helps to find out any bus and train routes by just entering the origin and destination. This application is designed by IIT Bombay.

Also, by entering train name or bus number would lead you to the detail of that particular train or bus number. I found this application very useful for people of Mumbai, as daily lacs of people travel by trains and busess. Currently this application is on the website which does not help people when they are on a move. I am designing the interface of Mumbai Navigator on mobile phones. Some of the initial ideas i am sharing with you, would love to get feedbacks.

The is the very first screen when you open the application. Here you can put your origin and destination in “from” and “to” option. By pressing the “select” button, by default it shows desired trains of chosen route.

“Option” button lets you look at other options like choosing a bus instead of train, also finding route by typing train name/bus number through “find by train name” and “find by bus number”.

This screen pops up when you choose “find by bus number”. Here i have shown some basic screen (though there are lot more) which is still on the design stage, but would like to get feedback from all of you to make it better.

Recently i got a comment about the latest article of cleartrip.com. In his comment, Saurabh mentioned about showing bumptop. Bumptop is quite old, but i think it would be fun to see. Sorry if you have already come across it.

BumpTop is a prototype graphical user interface, designed to enhance traditional computer desktop functionality by more closely supporting the normal behavior of a real world desk. It is aimed at stylus interaction, making it more suitable for tablet pcs and palmtops. It was created at the University of Toronto as Anand Agrawala’s Masters Thesis. Anand Agarawala also gave a presentation at the TED conference about his idea.

In BumpTop, documents are described by three-dimensional boxes lying on a virtual desk. The user can position the boxes on the desk using the stylus or mouse. Extensive use of physics effects like bumping and tossing is applied to documents when they interact, for a more realistic experience. Boxes can be stacked with well-defined stylus gesture. Multiple selection is performed by means of a LassoMenu, which fluidly combines into a single stroke the act of lasso selection and action invocation via pie menus.

I would say its an intelligent and metaphoric extension of our normal mac or windows desktop.

I had to book a ticket to Nagpur for one of my friend’s marriage. So while checking the flight sites.. i came across cleartrip. Neat and clean, pretty clear and gives me what i want. Something like google.

First page asks me for the location of travel, date and some other information. No unnecessary clicks. Then the second page describes about related airlines and fare.

Then it directs to further details like payment options etc. No jazzy advertisements, no unnecessary clicks and no unwanted information. Understandable and to the point website.

One more thing is, if i open the website another time, it shows me details of previous transaction i made.

Now every browser gives you a facility of remembering username and password, so you do not need to login every time. It automatically does that. But before your username and password has been stored in your browser it asks you to remember it or not.

Just came across one small but very important thing (i think). Recently i opened my linkedIn, where i put my username and password and something like this popped up.

Now when i see this, i do not understand where i am.. means what is by default selected.. whether it is “never for this site “, “not now” or “remember”. And if i press enter without looking it, i do not know whether it is going to save my username and password or not. Then i discovered that by default it is “not now”.

Now question is, in interaction design point of view, aren’t we missing here something? Shouldn’t be “not now” highlighted by default? One thing i would like to point out is ” i do not know whether it is only with mac (as i use mac) or it is there for windows also.

What say?

As you all might have seen a red color bold section in your gmail called “new gmail labs” which gmail announced on 5th June. While looking at those features, i found some very interesting and really needed. Lets check it out.

1. Quick links

Personally i like personalized application, and thats what gmail has done here. Though its not totally personalized, but for sure nice one. In “quick links”, you can make your customized links which is seen on the left side of the page.

Though i wish i could have more control, like i could hide option like spam, chat history etc which i never use and make my gmail more clean and focused on features i use. But still a nice one.

2. Superstars

In existing gmail, we can star some mail and give imprtance to that particular mail. Now how to categories those makred mail. Initially i thought there should be some option showing 5 stars and i can choose some stars according to the imprtnace of mail. For this reason, here comes superstars.

3. Fixed width fonts

Here you can view all mails in fixed width fonts. I feel its somehow incomplete. Because i always get frustrated when i have to change fonts and colors for each mails. I sent mails with “trebuchet” with light blue color. I always have to change those fonts and colors every time i write a new mail. The question is, why can not i make it default?

4. Mouse gestures

This is the one i like the most. I have always been into exploring new possibilities and modes of interaction. Here is find a new way of interacting with the content. I do not say its completely new, but in email domain i have not seen this sort of interaction. Here you use mouse gestures to go to next and previous mails, but right clicking and then moving mouse to left and right for previous and next mail respectively. I loved it.

There are more features though, but there were the one which i liked.