ALT or TITLE ?

ALT or TITLE ?

An interesting way to re-look at the use of ALT and TITLE attributes. Not only proper understanding of these attributes helps a lot in the efficient web standard practice but saves lot of time if followed perfectly as a customary practice, than "going back to add it later" as it's viewed by Ted Goas.

• "It’s important for web designers and developers to know how to write good ALT and TITLE attributes. Practices like these should be employed into each web page element as it’s created. As Roger notes, we should be including accessibility features when initially creating web pages rather than going back to add it later."
• "Alternate text is not meant to be used as a tool tip, or more specifically, to provide additional information about an image. The title attribute, on the other hand, is meant to provide additional information about an element…. Many people seem to confuse these two attributes…"
  

It's feasible to approach drafting accessibility assessment kind of report with the proper usage of ALT and TITLE attributes. Minor confusion between these may yield to faulty AA or AAA report.

> Further Read: Fadtastic blog

Design for End-User Security

Design for End-User Security

In one of the recent project I worked with; much of the emphasis was given to ease of use, user satisfaction achievement while working on the hierarchical user experience modules. The application is idealized to connect remote servers residing as a GUI widget on the user desktop.

One of the crucial concern was: 'addressing security' in information architecture & user experience modules. This was never highlighted as it was regarded as part of application architecture or not in the framework of User interaction design process then. Often information architecture tend to focus more on logical representation of the data & content flow & interaction design tries to achieve ease in accessing desired elements by the end user. Hence user centered methodology is tightly coupled with logical representation & ease of use in element hierarchy.

When we reached usability testing phase, the gray areas were popped out specially when the application was tested with mock user security settings. Giving us a realization that user interface modules need to address very basics of security & users' expectations and system behaviour. This may not be applicable to soft applications which doesn't deal with security or nothing to do with desktop authorization settings, but the aim is to gather front end user data & understand 'consumer' behavior. The user experience prototypes & models were tweaked to represent the feasibility of accessing security related settings.

Meanwhile, I found an interesting principle of interaction design in which 'End-User Security' is a prime concern of user experience module. Though dated, it has some good take away tips whilst designing interfaces for security focused applications:

It is critical to emphasize that security be perceived as easy to use by users, not designers, software developers, or system administrators. Actual behavior is the only definitive metric for whether users perceive the benefits of security to outweigh the costs. Security must be useful enough to warrant the extra learning time and any additional ongoing effort over using a different system with less security, or using the same system insecurely.

>> Principles of interaction design for security

Ethnography primer

Ethnography primer

• Ethnography informs design by revealing a deep understanding of people and how they make sense of their world. Ethnography is a research method based on observing people in their natural environment rather than in a formal research setting. When ethnography is applied to design, it helps designers create more compelling solutions.

Great design always connects with people. Designers inspire, provoke, validate, entertain and provide utility for people. To truly connect, designers need to have compassion and empathy for their audiences. Designers need to understand the relationship between what they produce and the meaning their product has for others. And they need to observe the people they are designing for in their own environments.

AIGA, in collaboration with Cheskin, has produced a simple and straight-forward primer introducing the crucial role that ethnography plays in designing.

> root

Jude Law: Breaking and Entering

Jude Law: Breaking and Entering

Though I've not watched much of his movies, I managed to watch 'Crocodile Tears' wayback, I could think of Jude as one of the decent actors. If you call method acting, natural acting, whatever acting- he's the guru of it.

It was pleasure to watch his latest flick in British airways flight on the way back to Bangalore. Good part was 9 odd hrs of direct flight from London with new movies in menu. I had ample time to watch The History Boys, Rocky Balboa, Breaking and Entering sipping my favo Heineken beer. I preferred -Breaking and Entering probably because it was Jude's movie. He looks bit elderly, still have that young charm of expressing placid emotions. I like his kind of elegance, though he relies much on metaphors.

It's story about theft, both criminal and emotional, “Breaking & Entering” follows three people whose lives intersect in the inner-city area of King’s Cross. When a landscape architect’s (Jude Law) state of the art offices in a seedy part of town are repeatedly burgled, his investigations launch him out of the safety of his familiar world.

The movie drives into various effusion levels with a nice plot. It's difficult to get off from the screen once glued to it while watching this movie. The moment Amira (Juliette Binoche) enters into center stage, the movie takes emotions to different tunes. Aaah ! she's simply stupendous in her role of; protecting her son Miro from theft charge. Her English with a Serbian accent is just too natural. The movie is so intense that your heart cries for the lovely mommy Amira & her inexplicable situation.

It's a touchy movie & though it's revolves around King's cross, it's also shot on the stylish bridge just behind Lehman brother's office in Canary wharf, London. The way was my usual route to home. It paints earthier and more enjoyable picture about London immigrants.

One question lingers in my mind after watching it. Who's breaking & entering in this movie ? Is it Miro who broke into Francis office or Franics breaking into Amira 's life ? I say, its a must watch.

7 beliefs that govern agency work

7 beliefs that govern agency work

First, read these bunch of words from one of the happening design-agency of London.

1. in a world of spiralling choices and mounting overload
   we believe in making the complex simple
2. in a world of product parity, low attention spans and bought loyalty
   we believe captivating experiences create affinity
3. in a world of decisions based on the briefest of encounters
   we believe every touchpoint matters
4. in a world of disjointed and fragmented communications
   we believe digital interactions must fit seamlessly into the customer experience
5. in a world propelled by incredible technology
   we believe human behavior is the hardest code to crack
6. in a world where customers demand perfection
   we believe delight leads to demand
7. in a world full of brands and their noise
   we believe it takes insight and imagination to stand out and win
   

I believe that's what the situation of design arena in London. Media design arena is extremely alive & kicking here. It's very dynamic, fast-paced & studded with cut-throat competition & name of the game is goodwill marketing. What matters at the end-of-the day is unbeatable design 'talent', innovative 'thinking', power packed 'portfolio' & damn good 'clientèle'.

Being affected with lethal design-phobia oflate, I'm grabbing every chance to experience 'wassup in design arena' whilst short span of my living in London. It's a big playground for design agencies. Luckily I got to know few people in the heart of design in their firms. Media is a big buzz here & media plays the high caliber in reaching masses effectively. Half of the news dailies are distributed freely in tubes & shopping malls.

One thing stark wherever you move in London is- a perfectly blended design in anything which is a part of visual media. Colors, typography, presentation, logical flow, a well-crafted experience, usability implementation- everything has a dash of nice touch. Take for e.g: DLR website of Dockland. The visual treatment is done with unique green colour(HEX: 00BBB4), it looks so good inside the train. Most of the govt., media work is shared by many privately held design agencies. One got to see innovative ideas flashing across the city.

Starting with flyer's scattered on the pavements, posters for anti-war demonstration in Trafalgar Square, a neat visiting card by a friendly traveler in train, free-daily-papers in the underground tube train, ads on the double-decker buses, a lone paper stand in elephant & castle, or a free magazine in the finest shopping malls of canary wharf, about to begin country-side-articles exhibition in Angels, partition-offices on the basement of Business-design-centre, a receipt bill I received in Dockland's Bar-one pub, Nike flash streaming, mammoth blowup ads in Piccadilly circle, online product design for Microsoft, Massive vinyl posters of 'The last king of Scotland' inside tubes: I find perfection & a neatly blended design behind every object. I sense the hand of impressive creative design agency.I couldn't resist the urge of appreciating all these. Ditto London has finest structures of British architecture (exception rules though!)

I met talented designer colleague of mine - Jyo, based out of London. If you think by look alone one can decide he's a designer- yes he's that chap! Immersed deeply into so-called graphikking, yet friendly. I heard an interesting thing about; how he made a difference to client focused delivery in one of the design intensive project.

He rolled out a design idea 'Buying fun' to one of the demanding-client. Precisely, creating an enjoyable experience to user keeping application & user motive in center. Blend a pinch of fun, frolic, logical thought in navigational interfaces flow & involve a user to feel pleasure interacting with an application - That's the funda behind 'Buying fun'. Interesting isn’t it? I hope -'Buying fun' adds extra dash of tequila to the cocktail party of engaging experience design.

| Access 'Top 100 Interactive Agencies' |

Why white ?

Why white ?

This is interesting ! Just by changing the white Google background color to black, netizens can save $75,000 ! I don't know how practical this theory is. But the statistics, facts, tests, user comments makes it an interesting read !

• As noted, an all white web page uses about 74 watts to display, while an all black page uses only 59 watts. I thought I would do a little math and see what could be saved by moving a high volume site to the black format.
• Take at look at Google, who gets about 200 million queries a day. Let's assume each query is displayed for about 10 seconds; that means Google is running for about 550,000 hours every day on some desktop. Assuming that users run Google in full screen mode, the shift to a black background will save a total of 15 (74-59) watts. That turns into a global savings of 8.3 Megawatt-hours per day, or about 3000 Megawatt-hours a year.
• Now take into account that about 25 percent of themonitors in the world are CRTs, and at 10 cents a kilowatt-hour, that's $75,000, a goodly amount of energy and dollars for changing a few color codes.
  

>Via blog of: Mark Ontkush
>Also visit: Black searching in blackle.com

Ms. Dewey v/s Google

Ms. Dewey v/s Google

If you haven't tried Ms. Dewey, you should. She's undoubtedly a core element of Microsoft's strategy to kill Google and own search.

Google has successfully made their site the front door through which everyone passes in order to access the Internet. But staring at an almost blank sheet of paper has become, well, boring. Take Ms. Dewey for example. While some may object to her sultry demeanor, it's pretty hard to deny that interfacing with her is far more visually appealing than with an inert white screen.

> root

Shiva rocks !

Shiva rocks !

Shiva: Favorite picture of the day from Flickr. Quite funny but well composed shot with a more of post-process. That kinda green tinge looks nice.

After having spicy desi lunch in Chillies near office, was listening to this soul stirring number of my favo Lucky Ali.

London weather is very unpredictable. God knows when drizzling ends to make a way for sun shine. It happens very randomly & that's the beauty of this month. Sometimes it's dusky, drizzling, or just cloudy, sometime it's warm sunshine.

I love to plug-in my music pod whenever I get to commute in tubes. The only place where phones don't work, words go silent, moods go dry, people immerse into day's paper or blackberries.

While walking on the lonely parks, long bridges, wet pavements of London Lucky Ali gives me a company with his warm ballads. It's transcending to hear husky voice of him. Sometimes I think he's humming feelings running inside me..

Anjaane raho mein tu kya
doond tha phire...
door jisko samjha woh tho
paas hai there

saas mein hawaa
jaan mein zameen
dil mein khulaaa
aaasmaan..

ooov! I go crazy with these rhythmic lines. There's nothing like listening to his songs & sipping chilled heineken beer in the calm, cool, windy balcony of my apartment looking at boats moving in Thames; fading into the evening of March.