Oh my Ford! - Isn't it time to change the iconic gear?

I purchased a Ford car, just 7 months back, in fact, drove the first Ford car of my life, only recently. Until now, its been only Japanese, Korean and German cars. This is first time I possessed an all American car. The reason was simple - strong recommendation from a relative - and it fit my budget, and yes it suited my personality. A mix of these prompted me to buy it - though I met strong apprehensions from family and self. But once I possessed it and used it for some time - I realized Ford has great quality, great efficiency (YMMV), great control. All my apprehensions have been disappeared. I learnt its features and functions and realized that lot of thought has gone into designing it. Small-small features proved beneficial to me:

• Positioning of the Main Control Screen (very aptly positioned that while driving too I can glance on the screen with no turning of the head)
• Wiper speed control via scroll wheel (Excellent idea of providing custom wiper speeds at all levels)
• Information toggle switch (On the dashboard they have come out with a side-lever-press to toggle the different values)
• SYNC (This makes the media operations of my car hands free - which is fabulous)
• Tilt feature in rear seats (I can tilt the rear seats at multiple angles easily)
• Tough outer sheet quality (Makes the car feel like sturdy)
• + Awesome average of ~ 20 kmpl on diesel

When I studied more about Ford, I came to know it also has some of the serious innovations and thousands of patents to its credit. Some of the 'firsts' that it brought to the world are:

• Famous assembly line process (that reduced chassis time from 12.5 to 1.5 hr)
• In fact the introduction of 2-shifts-a-day to 3-shifts-a-day was by Ford
• Safety Glass Windshield (that protects us from glass even if windshield breaks)
• Ford flathead V8 engine (outperformed all competitors in 1932)
• Deep-dish steering wheel
• Child-proof door locks
• First retractable hardtop

But even after taken the lead so early in cars, the point is, still its popularity is unlike those of the higher selling cars like Japanese and Korean and the likes. It bothered me - why I had a negative perception about Ford earlier.

What could be the reason for the same? I inquired for a long time. Searched around for reasons but there was no substantial ones.

But in general people said these:

• Low Mileage
• High maintenance cost
• Average Looks
• Or customers personal grudges

I have used the Ford car and others - there is nothing wrong of this sort with Ford - and my earlier perception was out-ruled after using it too. (In fact in many aspects it is better than others*.) Still had no clue about the main reason for me disliking the brand altogether 'earlier'. I realized the main problem, I believe could have been, visibility. The connect. The brand. The perception. And the association over the years. From these - I feel it is something related to perception. Perception of people about the brand - Ford. I couldn't form a good perception about Ford - unconsciously. But I wondered how this perception was formed over the years, even though I knew nothing about the history and geography about the company and its cars. What could have been the cause for this perception to be formed - the way it had formed. (??)

After a lot of observation and inquiry - I shortlisted these that could have formed my opinion unconsciously:

1. Word of Mouth
2. Advertising
3. The Logo

After outruling the first two - for me the perception culprit  - could have been the logo! The famous blue logo with silver calligraphic text written on it! But why could have been the logo? Logo says a lot about the brand and its identity and the way people perceive the brand. The reason it could have been the logo because over the years it had given me a perception of Ford not being a very attractive (?). Probably yes. Although the current logo is very american, very elegant and superb but still it could have been a reason for my negative perception of Ford cars. After enquiry I found there are a few problems with it:

• Not visible from far
• Contrast not appropriate
• Doesn't stand tall
• As compared to other brands

After observing the logos of the cars while driving and observing, I felt, the logo of Ford doesn't seem a good fit. Logo of other popular cars are smarter and cleaner. If one watches this image below - one would notice the problem with the logo of Ford (and some others too) not being clearly visible from far:

Ford Logo is not clearly visible

Calligraphy was used in almost all logos

The logo was then designed by a friend of Henry Ford, Childe Harold Wills, who had designed it uniquely and marvellously as for those times but it seems in recent times it is not very appropriate because:

• Visibility due to pollution is low in current times
• Calligraphy in the logo makes it unnoticeable when it is small
• Numerous other brands with good visible logos from far have come up

[an interesting link for the information of Ford logo is here]

A logo is very important for a company's branding in customers mind and attracting new customers. An eye-catching logo (even though small in size) always stands out and makes an impact. Scalability is the main property of the logo as it would appear when seen from far. For these reasons I believe a stronger, bigger, logo should be made to make Ford a bigger brand than it is currently perceived to be. The logo of a car needs to have these simple properties to be perceived correctly:

• Bold
• Easily Memorable
• Usable without colors
• Visible from far
• Visible in dark too

[+ An expert's link for the logo design: link]

After sketching a few designs going by the above guidelines I came up with these draft options (obviously they need to modified):

Signifies: The Letter F, Upwards Direction, Boldness, Speed, Strength 

Signifies: The letter F. crisp sharp wit, clarity of design, speed

Logo could be one of the problems towards the perception of Ford but there could be other reasons too. The blog was aimed to incite the thought/discussion towards the Ford's and other cars logos. Hope it brings the desired effect!

* - [I am not expert on cars, UX, logos. :-) The views presented here are not intended to malign any brand, country or entity.]

Glow Forge - laser cutting machine makes sense for the artistic people out there!

I was recently recommended "Glow Forge" machine by a friend of mine who in turn saw it at a UX conference. And when I came back to my desk and searched for it on the Internet - I was awestruck!. Yes, this is what my crafter wife wanted from long. But when I saw the price - I said nah, I can't afford it. :-( I closed the webpage. And, I didn't tell her about it :-( :-( at first.

Time passed, then one fine day she again mentioned the thought of cutting MDF (thin wood) at home via a machine in desired designs for her crafting work so that she can avoid the travel to the local carpenter. She infact showed me a few machines from Aliexpress. At that moment I couldn't resist and told her to look at the machine by the name glow-forge. She called back after an hour - "I want it. (period) Please"

Then the struggle started. Almost everyday we together searched and saw videos of glowforge machine. Things went on, for quite some time I tried to convince her to:

•  Check glowforge's Price (!)
•  Check glowforge's waiting time (!)
•  Check glowforge's shipping price (!)
•  & lastly check for alternatives

Then began our hunt for alternatives to save some money & time. These were the alternative machines that we studied:

•  http://www.mehtaindia.com/
•  http://www.ulsinc.com/en-in/products/vls230/
•  http://www.cuttingmachine.in/
•  http://www.lasercuttingmachines.in/

We spent lot of time studying these machines. Watched videos - studied specifications. I applied my tech expertise to make the case for buying one of these. But when I created a comparison checklist Vs Glowforge this was the result:

	Glow Forge	Others
Looks	Beauty	Rough looks
Sleekness	Slim & thin	Bulky & Factory like
Materials Supported	Lot (Maximum Listed)	Lesser / Not clearly listed
Cutting Thickness	6mm + 6mm	3 to 4 mm or lesser
Cutting Work Area	12” x 20”	12” x 18” or lesser
Safe	Safe (US standards)	Not sure
Wifi connectivity	Yes	No
Precision	0.025 mm	Varies / unclear

We finally decided to go with peace-of-mind and with a good looking machine that we can keep it easily in the crafts room. Though the price we paid was high $2394 after we saved $100 from Brad's referral code.

We hope others would also use our referral code and reduce our purchase price of the machine.

$100 Referrer Discount Link: https://glowforge.com/referred/?kid=E9pFiR 

Good Luck!

Can an Interview be replaced with just a Car drive?

[The blog has been written w.r.t:: interviewing might equal judging driving habits. References have been made to manual gear based cars that still operate in India and other developing countries.]

Interviewing a candidate has become such a monotone painful process of asking some questions looking for bizarre answers and then also being in double minds as to the candidate was rehearsed or spoke extempore. And then asking some other interviewers to ask different set of questions to make sure the candidate is genuine. Same could go on for multiple interviewers and for the whole day. An interviewee too has to go through such a grind even if he is good. And one has to have a very good day to impress all interviewers. As an interviewer many a times I had thought to create a better easier process to judge a candidate if he is good, no matter the process takes longer. Car driving came closest to appearing through the interview grind. And even judging a candidate is easier and more certain when as an interviewer we judge someone on their driving skills. Lets see how.

Lets start by asking- is driving a car easy? Ask some one who doesn't know it :-). It seems so mind-boggling while you have just started learning. One or the other time, we sweat when we are in the middle of a crossing struggling with starting the car with other people behind waiting for you. Car driving is not simple because it is like coordinating between many-many car parts at one go: the gear, accelerator, brake, clutch, steering, horn via movement of so many body parts: legs, hands, eyes, brain and mouth (sometimes :). All these activities are done for controlling obstructions from all SIX sides! The kind of brain-activity during driving, if measured, would depict like enormous 
amount of calculations going-on in IBM's Watson. 

This kind of pressure on the brain in car driving would almost equal the brain-activity that goes on while taking an interview. During the interview  - the state of mind has to be very receptive, calculative and innovative. The alertness needed in both (car learning and interview taking) seem to be similar. A corollary can be derived out of it here - we can take a driving test (real driving test or in the form of a game) of the interviewee to determine the quality of the candidate. The level would vary if the interviewee knows car driving already - but irrespective of the fact that he knows driving or not we can judge a candidate's suitability to join the organization. Surprising, isn't it? We will soon come to know how.

Here are some parameters that we can judge the candidate on:

1. Picking up: How you pick up your vehicle involves a lot of co-ordination between the clutch and accelerator - and it needs to done cleanly without jerks. Picking up your car smoothly symbolizes the ease with which work is done. Picking up involves being in control of the car  basically having the ability to guide the interview process.

2. Effort to Manoeuvre: Steering manoeuvre to take turns also tells you how expert the person in reducing the effort of a repeated task. Some people put lot of effort in taking a sharp-turn where as some can do it pretty effortlessly. It just symbolizes how task simplification can be performed innovatively by smart people. When people find ways to work smartly they preserve more energy for other tasks.

3. Average efficiency: When we drive our car rashly, the fuel average per mile goes down. And when driven smoothly with least amount of braking the mileage goes up. But YMMV as it goes - Your Mileage May Vary. Our driving efficiency reveals a lot about us - its the same way we drive other things in our daily life. If our mannerisms during driving are to get the most mileage - the same is reflected in our lives too - we endure to drive value from most of our things/activities. We are the hard negotiators who want most value for our money.

4. Frequent Braking and Gear changing: When we brake efficiently and optimally change gears we get optimal fuel economy. It is said if you want best fuel economy you should use brakes least. And with brakes the gear changing also comes into effect - a person who does both in sync without much jerks is capable of slowing down when required.

5. Know how: After driving the car for sometime we come to know some features of the car that we might not have noticed otherwise. All features and functions of your car are available to you to explore - its your inquisitiveness that lets you learn the features of your car. A candidate's exploratory attitude shows up when he describes the explored features of his car. Knowing the machine & the tools that is what will give you control and confidence over the vehicle and the make journey a satisfying experience.

6. Parking: Parking a car is a skill involves lot of calculations. In fact there are several online games that test your car parking skills. And when it involves reverse park - it gets more rigorous. Good parking skills signify your calculative mind- how well you can judge the problems and act accordingly.

7. Behaviour: The passes we give also determine how easy are we with allowing others to move forward than us. There are several times people increase their speed just to keep others behind them - the psychology of not allowing others to get ahead and purposefully having the habit of blocking others way. In a corporate environment we need to carefully see for elements like these that might be spoilers for the whole environment.

a. Ambulance: There are some important etiquettes like giving proper pass to ambulance or following those vehicles in order to gain speed. There would be a time when you would have to give a time-restrained goal to the candidate to complete and in that stipulated time. One would need to observe if he adheres to the basic etiquettes too.

b. Roadster behind: When a great speed roadster passes us from behind the wheels, generally, our speed automatically increases and the instinct is to follow the roadster. But that doesn't help in the longer run - it is futile. Not following the roadster depicts a control over self.

c. Road Rage: Riding on a road should involve no rage. Smart people know it is completely redundant to look into the eyes of a person who is ready to fight with you on a slightest altercation. Road rage depicts the "ego" and having a high ego is completely avoidable in a corporate environment. A person should be adjusting and be agile keeping his ego aside.

d. Taking Over: Taking over calculation is extremely important for a highway driver. If the calculation is not right, even for one time - it may cost many lives. Overtaking skills are useful in judgement of ability of taking the right decisions in a difficult environment.

e. Fuel in the Tank: Keeping how much fuel in the tank is a preference. Given an option it can be judged whether we drive with tank full or low. When we drive with a tank 'full' there is different satisfaction because of which we are relaxed during driving. When the fuel is low there is different tension one goes through. The fuel that one maintains in the fuel tank also indicates how planned a person is. 

These are some of the things that come to my mind while writing this eccentric blog. It could also be developed as a game that interviewees can play over and prove their skills. Hope to see your comments to better the driving interview :-)

A phone with inbuilt headphones

Many a times while I was traveling, I repented having forgotten just one thing, my headphones :-) Had I brought them with me I would be enjoying my journey with decent movie, music, book or unseen season of big bang theory or game of thrones. Pity me!

Neither I could even look outside through the train's blurry windows, nor the people seemed interesting/interested to talk. When this happened a few times I started keeping a spare set of headphones (earplugs) in my shaving kit as the kit was unmissable. So this is how I kind of made my train journey interesting!

But this was not enough, repentance found its way again. Traveling by delhi-metro became quite often and I felt had I got my headphones I could have utilized my time there too. I was surprised to see there are hundreds of people carrying their earplugs with them.

A question comes up: why can't this problem be solved in a different way? So that people don't have to remember their earplugs but they are inbuilt in phone themselves! At the need hour you pull them and after use they can pushed back. How handy would it be!

Something like this:

There are several others aspects of design (dimensions of speakers, working of wheel etc)  that could be important while fully designing a phone with inbuilt headphones but certainly India could be a good market atleast.

Does this appeal to you at the first go? Do comment :)

Copy all tabbed URLs to clipboard & back

Problem:

Tabbed browsing is the norm now. Many a times I search for say laptops and send out the open weblinks of browser tabs via email. This involves copy pasting each link one-by-one which is really cumbersome. And for the person who is receiving those links has to individually click on each link to open those.

Solution:

This invention has 2 parts:
1. It proposes to copy all open weblinks of browser tabs to the clipboard to facilitate further copying to other applications.
2. Also the links placed on the clipboard and be opened in different browser tabs at once

The above 2 methods could also be extended for Adobe products where a user may:
 - Copy all filepaths (or files if desired) of the open files to clipboard
 - Open all files from the clipboard containing filepaths (or files)

Advantages:

- Reduces the task involving multiple [n x (copy + paste)] operation to a single step 

- For a sender and receiver both the task is minimized

Detailed Description:

Typically the file open/save module uses the OS open dialog to choose the files to open/save. With this invention we help solve the same by passing a list of files/weblinks via the clipboard.

This invention in browsers can be made to work in this way:

1. On the browser tab, a new menu appears "Save all open links to clipboard"

2. Once the menu is clicked, all open links are saved onto the clipboard separated by newline char.

3. Now if someone presses a CTRL+v on a text editor, he gets to see all the weblinks in this fashion:

http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/04/24/extensive-hands-on-with-google-drive-they-forgot-the-beta-tag/

https://developers.google.com/drive/examples/index

https://developers.google.com/drive/v2/reference/

http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/04/google-drive-sdk-announced-but-apis-are-only-accesible-to-web-apps-for-now/

For reverse open from clipboard, another menu can be added  "Open Links from clipboard":

1. When this menu is clicked

2. All the links from the clipboard get opened in different tabs

Ironically, this solution seems to exist:

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/iiagcalhlpmgdipdcikkjiliaankcagj

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/launch-clipboard/reviews/

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bknechokhjgchpodgplolmkgicojmgnd/related

Tunes 2.0 - Nextgen Call Answering

This idea of custom network message was thought through in 2007. A network based solution to the users for communicating their status to the caller.

Immense discussions were done on it - we even tried to meet a few potential VAS customers if they would be willing to invest in it.:-( Finally we ended up patenting it with the India patents office.

(Ideas was coined alongwith my colleague Gautam Kachru)

.. The PPT says it all ..

Secured Conditional Text

Adobe FrameMaker, Adobe Robohelp and Microsoft Word are some of the commercial tools

that use Conditional text feature in some form or the other. Conditional Text is one of the advanced feature of desktop publishing tools used mostly for Single Sourcing of a document. This feature is highly used in industry all over the world from writing Specifications to

Documentation of a product. Using this feature, different versions of a document can be maintained.

conditional text: text that may have alternate renderings, based on what the conditional text

is referenceing ... see http://www.livelinx.com/contentmanagement/conditionaltext.

html

As of now, we may show/hide conditional text created by any user in a document. There is no security implemented with the show/hide of the text.
Creating security at user level, based on Conditions tag can be useful for a document, as all users cannot edit/view other users text in the document. There are cases where Administrator of document wants to ensure certain part of document to be hidden from users, meanwhile allowing other users to have permissions of their respective sections.

The intent is to implement permission based conditional text so that the creator of conditional tag may define the view/edit permissions associated with it for other users.

Goal: It provides the document with "secure" conditional text such that a text within the document can

be hidden from other users and shown only if the specific user has permissions over it.

Example:

There is a shared file XYZ Now the owner of XYZ is Superuser. He creates a textA with view permissions to A, and textB with view permissions to B. Now when the file XYZ is opened by B he may not be able to see the text created for A. 

Now A can create an attribute over textC for which he gives permissions to B, then B can also view this text. It can be extended to edit permissions as well. If Superuser gives edit permissions for textA to A,

he may change the textA attributes as well.'

(this was coined along with my colleague: Ankur Prakash)