Blog Reloaded

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UPDATE Aug 2005: Orange Hues was originally launched as a team blog on usability under the title IndiaCHI (CHI for Computer Human Interaction) and ran in that avtar on blogspot for about an year. After which I took over, renamed it Orange Hues and moved to this domain. For more, see this post from Oct04: IndiaCHI is now Orange Hues.

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This post seeks to define the purpose, agenda and audience of this blog.

First, thanks to Vikram who actually took the initiative to start this blog. This was a while back and since most of us were unclear what it intended to do and why should we be blogging - it never took off. There was also some confusion about how to start posting [we were trying to log in at BlogSpot.com when this actually works from Blogger.com].

Well, I’ve set it up again, with a new template and some changes and since it was me who mooted the idea of a team blog, let me clarify the ideas behind it. [I had to wait all this while to put it up because I was off my cable LAN connection and browsing is fairly restricted from a MTNL dial-up]

Purpose: why blog?

I originally proposed it because meeting up every Sunday [here in Delhi] was getting difficult. Putting up yet another discussion group was ruled out because it adds to the bulk of our [already heavy] mailboxes. Nobody likes to get multiple copies of a thread that has little relevance to their work.

A Blog is better because it is easier to access and we can choose to read it/contribute to it at our leisure and no one gets dozens of e-mails.

So essentially we see this as a surrogate to our weekly Sunday meetings. There are other benefits of course, like the fact that folks in Bombay and Bangalore can now participate.

If I remember correctly, we started the meetings with one aim and it still stands good for the blog:

Form a community of usability professionals and enthusiasts in India, and:

* Learn from and educate each other
* Promote the discipline around us

Note: I've kept the terms 'friends of usability' and 'the discipline' undefined because
a] We don’t want to get into the debate of definitions and labels. Not yet, at least.
b] It keeps us flexible, open and in discovery mode - which is essential for learning and growth - rather than rigid, closed and formed mode – which stifles innovation and new learning.
c] We all know what we’re promoting here, so let’s just give it a name that is recognised most – usability.

Agenda: what to talk?

All things user experience. Okay, here’s a quick list of the things you can do here: Post links to articles you find useful. Talk about trouble you face in promoting UX to your bosses/ colleagues/ clients. Discuss your ideas. Put them to test here. Organise a meetup. Tell others how you solved a problem. Or those you couldn’t solve. Share your designs or code. Ask how it looks in mac-IE5, win-NN4 or Safari. Speak about what excites you about your work. Or what you find most frustrating. Dissect a design – tell us why you think it’s bad [or good!] and how’d you change that SmartyPants. Secretly post screenshots of your NDA-ised work and ask for an opinion or resources.

This is just off the cuff. We can do so much more!

PS: Tip #71 – When in doubt head here. Come back to this entry when you don’t know what to post.

Audience: who’s listening?

Mainly us, the contributors to the blog. Also, anybody else who may find the entries valuable. This may include students and practitioners in India.

It shouldn’t be difficult to get a prominent place in Google for terms |usability india|, so expect some of the traffic from outside India to head over here.

Rules? There aren’t any. Just a few tips

a. keep in mind to keep it on topic.
b. to post an image put it on your server and link to it here.
c. ‘Add a comment’ feature isn’t supported on blogger yet. There are some third party tools that provide this service. I'll soon update this. Note that Blogger of course is only a temporary platform. As soon as it picks up steam and if we see any good in it, we’ll make it an independent blog [perhaps on IndiaCHI.com].
d. Please do reply to any feedback e-mails you receive from the readers of this blog. If you’re pressed for time, send them to me!