Of Indian Languages and the Internet

Nikhil Pahwa in a post on Medianama tells us:

At the Internet Governance Forum being held in Hyderabad, Ajit Balakrishnan, CEO of Rediff.com said that there is no evidence from the last ten years of the Internet business that users want Indian languages. Rediff has email in 11 languages, and 99% of the users prefer to use email in English. One of the issues is that “practically all of the 300 million young people who aspire to something in this country aspire to learn English.” Therefore “Let us not assume that users want Indian languages.” He mentioned that Nokia has experimented with Indic language keyboards, and pointed out Eterno’s transliteration app which allows the usage of latin characters for messaging in Indic languages.

There has been interesting posts/comments on this by various bloggers, one in particular by BG Mahesh (Mahesh's post)

Obviously, Ajit Balakrishnan has missed the point. Mahesh does make some interesting comments but I find his ideas unconvincing.

I think all of the posts and blogs I have read on this have not thought about the following:

1. Language is not important, Communication is
This might sound distasteful to language purists, but this is just the basics. Language does become important as an identity projector and for its political ramifications, but beyond that, for day-to-day life, its just a means of communication. In their daily life, people will use whatever language allows them to connect to the largest mass of people, or whatever is easy and available. As of now, its neither easy to read (rendering) or write (script complications in use of "matras") in comparison to English (which uses only letters for both consonants and vowels). One might argue that the Japanese script is complicated as well, but that argument falls short simply because India is more comfortable with English because of reasons I have outlined in point 2 below.


2. Its not just the Internet when it comes to Indian languages
The internet is just a reflection of the society we are. Indian languages are not in their prime in urban India (at least). The average child in North India no more says "ma" and "bapu" while addressing her/his mother and father - surprisingly uses "mummy" and "papa", for the two words that represent a child's closest relationships. Higher education is mostly in English. We don't have too many books for advanced studies written credibly in any Indian language like the Germans or the Japanese have.


3. People might be looking for different content and packaging when it comes to Indian languages
Till now effort has been made to provide Indian language alternatives to the applications that exist in English, as if people will adopt it because of some dying need. Most of these people who have created or pushed for these alternatives, may themselves have had no real need for the same, and have just contrived it to suit their intellectual pursuit or some archaic belief that other people across the often imagined "digital divide" need it - a condescending attitude if not ignorance. A little looking around (and I know I am still guessing it) might show that the solution lies elsewhere. Because of usage, vernacular languages might have their own content and packaging space in media, one that does have overlaps with English media, but also has its own niche - and the same is true for the internet. Some ideas to consider:

1. Blogs: A Tamil or a Bengali might blog about work-stuff in English, but would he blog poems in the same? Poems are about feelings and its not easy to blog in a language other than your mother tongue - after all it will end up being just a transliteration, mush like the way most Indians speak English - thinking in their mother tongue and then transliterating it into English. I am sure content like poems or lyrics or even native jokes would be blogged in an Indian language.

2. Social Networking: It would be so un-cool to network on Facebook in an Indian Language, simply because Indian languages have not grown fast enough to accommodate and now create college-slangs and fashionable yet simple words - the languages have stagnated and gone out of fashion. However, it might be very very cool to use Hinglish, which is a spoken combination of Hindi and English and has been made fashionable by the aspirational urban youth.

3. Mails: It would be a pain to write long mails in Hindi, for example, where getting the "matras" right would be so much difficult. On the other hand, if written in English, people can figure out words even if one makes a "tpyo".

4. Twitter: Now that is something one might want to write in an Indian language like Hindi, or Hinglish, or Telegu or Bengali for that matter. Micro-messaging wouldn't be so much of a pain, even if one had to use "matras" in Hindi, as was the case in mails. On the other hand it might be interesting to explore and tweet in different Indian languages and rediscover them.

The possibilities could be endless. But its important to keep it cool, simple and easy.

The internet is not an intellectual event. Its a mass phenomenon. You have to design for the masses.

Products are not just a collection of Features

Software products are not just created but also thought out and conceptualized as a collection of features. While this works for extending features on an existing large product, for the conceptualization of a new product, this is possibly the best way to lose your way.

The value of the whole is not always a sum total of its parts.

Let me use a familiar analogy. A house, for example, is not just a collection of rooms, or of its accessories. Each room by itself doesn't have the "value" to its occupants as the whole house has. This is because, beyond the collection of rooms, the house is also built around the social interaction of its occupants. The same collection of rooms, organized in 2 different ways based on 2 different social interactions, will provide a wholly different kind of "value" to their occupants. Similar is the case in software products.

I am a big advocate of the need to think and conceptualize a software product in terms of its social interactions. After all its the social interactions in a product that users of the product experience, and the features are only a means to achieve them. Many of the current range of Web 2.0 applications are actually based on a single social interaction. Many products, in fact, started from a single social interaction, but have since found expression in a wider range of social interactions as well.

Twitter for example, is a simple application that started off with a simple social interaction - "implicit asynchronous messaging" - you could "publish" your status to the stream and let people downstream know about it, without having to explicitly message people. This might have seemed initially to most people (including myself) as not such great stuff, but a little thought will tell you that this is akin to "micro-publishing". The possibilities of extending this social interaction to evolve into a whole genre of social interactions, as people "get it" is endless. Thinking of Twitter as only a feature couldn't have opened up these possibilities, as thinking of Twitter as a publishing-consuming social interaction does.

Of the current crop of Web 2.0 products, those that will survive and grow into the next big thing, will have successfully mapped the next generation of social interactions.

Each such social interaction may involve a single or a multiple set of features. Again, each such interaction may involve some of the features partially. So, those coming from the old world of product management might want to create a matrix/map that co-relates social interactions to features and this might be helpful for them in product development. However, the progress in product development still needs to be measured in terms of how much of the conceptualized social interaction has been achieved and what possibilities lie ahead.

Designing products for the Entrepreneur...

As part of a series of lectures, yesterday I got one of the start-up CEOs my design team works with, Anand Raj, to come and talk to us about an entrepreneur's needs for design. What he said was insightful in more ways than one:

Insight 1: Getting the "Connect" right
Anand's main insight was that, unless the designer is able to "connect" with the entrepreneur, they may not be able to move ahead with the actual design activity. This connect, Anand feels can be established by one-on-one conversation, or showcasing work that help visualize the entrepreneur's thoughts or the ability to guide the entrepreneur in moving ahead with design. There could be other ways as well. However, the "connect" itself is a soft-skill and comes probably with a keen curiosity, active listening and the ability to contribute at an instant in the context of a discussion.

Insight 2: Fighting the "Ego"
Most often, the designer and the entrepreneur have their own egos and a conflict can arise naturally. How these people fight their own egos out, determine if they can work as a team. It is important for the entrepreneur to understand and appreciate that the designer is the subject-matter expert and therefore opinions of the designer are of utmost importance. On the other hand, the designer needs to understand that s/he is the "facilitator" of a design, and not the "creator". The designer's task is to guide the entrepreneur and facilitate the design process.

Insight 3: Building "Trust"
If the "connect" happens and the "egos" are kept out, and the designer and entrepreneur are able to guide, challenge and take each other's ideas forward, "trust" will follow.

Insight 4: The influence of personality, power distance and hierarchy
Anand gives an example of how he was meeting with a famous CEO without knowing who he was and the candid conversation he had, while his response changed when he came to know who that person was. The designer and the entrepreneur need to both understand these dynamics and ensure that the team works well irrespective of such influences.

Anand went on to use these insights to elaborate how without the understanding of these insights and the ability to connect and build trust, the relationship might become difficult. Without mutual trust, even though the designer might work very hard on the design and come up with a great design, the entrepreneur might not be able to appreciate the work done. Soon the team dynamics may get into an ego-brawl leading to conflict of interests.

Design is a difficult activity. The acceptance criteria for a design cannot be made objective completely. In such a scenario, it is important to understand that doing design for an entrepreneur is not just about going away to a corner and attempting to get it done - it is as much about thought leadership, the conversations and guidance, the progress and the ability to work with the entrepreneur as a team.

Unlike designing products for today, and therefore knowing what society's needs are in the current context, the entrepreneur is most probably trying to create products for tomorrow and therefore project his ideas based on a vision for the future. This is a challenging task and the designer will need to bring to the table thought leadership, expertise and tools and enable that future vision.

Back again with Workstreamr...

This is the repost from my tumblr log:

Its been a long time since my last post… I had been busy working on a few products that will probably change tomorrow.

One such product is Workstreamr. It’s something we had started to work on with the founders of Workstreamr - Stowe, Ben and Sam. Personally, Stowe has been a philosopher and guide to me and I have learnt a lot from him. Ben and Sam are my friends and I greatly admire their enthusiasm, drive and ambition. These three guys came to us at GlobalLogic with this fantastic idea called Workstreamr and I could immediately see how it could change the way project collaboration was done. I had been a user of several project collaboration tools, including Basecamp, and had been frustrated with some of its limitations. I could see immense value in something like Workstreamr.

Workstreamr is one of those products that logically takes the concepts of Web 2.0 away from mere “social networking” to help people do much more - work, collaborate and be productive. Even if you are a freelancer or a small business enterprise, Workstreamr hopes to help you collaborate in a way you want to do without putting too much work overheads for you to handle at each step. Though large enterprises will benefit from this product immensely, but its really the small businesses and freelancers that will prosper from using Workstreamr.

I am excited. To collaborate I will no longer need to set up complex workflows and track them. Workstreamr is more human - it allows stuff to ”flow” to me in a “stream”, which I can respond to when I want to in my time-space. The concepts of streaming and flow have been around in the design community for sometime - but to see it beautifully crafted into a product like Workstreamr is a joy. You will have to get an invite for Workstreamr and see for yourself how it works.

Working on this product has been fulfilling for me as a designer and in the way we collaborated across geographies and across design and development competencies as an integrated team, one of the important value propositions of Globallogic’s Version 1.0 offering. I think the first big step we took was to clearly visualize the product as a team, prototype it, start development in “small but sure” iterations and build ahead from there. I think the team is a great one - the pace and quality that has been set is amazing.

Watch out for more on the Workstreamr experience in the future. Until then get an invite, try it out and keep your feedback coming.

My move to "tumblr" didn't work out...

I had moved to 'tumblr', but had to revert back to 'blogger.com' because tumblr is designed to be a scrapbook and a group-log, and a good old blog is what i was looking for.

How "Search" will change...

Algorithmic improvements of "blind" search (the search via a blank search box) can only take you so far, and Google continues to do a good job of that. This is "pull" search and relies entirely on the users' ability to recall and construct a search query. However, as human beings we don't really search simply by recall - our search for any information or thing is based on correlation and semantics.

Therefore, next generation search will be "push" based, using tags (or other mechanisms) to correlate pieces of information and pushing relevant "groupings" upfront for the user to savor. This will automate and reduce the trouble of "maintaining" folders/groups and yet help users see and use relevant correlations and possibly manipulate and add/delete from. In an ideal situation any new information added would seamlessly flow like a trickle of water into all its relevant channels.

Will blind search vanish? No. As in our natural surroundings, blind search will continue to exist, but it will not be the primary means of looking for things.

Our primary means of looking for things will be defined by improvements application providers make of using our usage patterns to provide us with what is most relevant to us.

Infact, in a few years, Google's (and others') search engine front end will possibly be dead. It will not longer be a home page, as it is today for some. At the most it will be an insignificant "widget" sitting somewhere on your new home page, which in all probability will be your most visited "social network" site. And this new home page will be so "intelligent" and semantically sophisticated, that the mere mention of a search box at the center of a page with nothing else on it (Google search home page) will appear as obviously pre-historic as a DOS command interface looks to us today.

By the way, you don't need to believe me today. Just wait until tomorrow.

Behavioral pattern mapping is inevitable

So Google IS wary of behavioral targeting...

http://infotech.indiatimes.com/articleshow/2247562.cms

Either Google is really worried and thinking OR this is a PR activity. Either ways, its good that they and hopefully all the others are looking at that in the right context and that is commendable for a leader.

But, i do think its inevitable to do behavioral pattern mapping. If Google doesn't do it, someone else will. Therefore its important that industry leaders like Google think about the future and start defining "how it should be done" rather than being wary and not doing it.

We need to put together a system where application providers like Google own the patterns that they come up with and can use it to design applications, but don't own people's personal data. People themselves own their personal data and the data is protected by an independent vendor who gets a commission for this service. Finally, service providers pay people for the data when they use it. This way there will be a separation of interests as far as ownership is concerned, and hopefully prevent misuse.

Will someone in Yahoo please wake up...

Its good to be back after a few weeks.

Jerry Yang needs to do more than fill in for the Terry Semel. He needs to start opening his design team's eyes to its user population, especially in large markets like India.

I have been part of a very well known HCI forum in India and have seen the forum face one particular problem in Yahoogroups for the last one and a half years (or maybe more). The problem is thus:

Forum members post job ads in the forum for usability/HCI specialists. While replying, many members don't notice the default "Reply to: the group" option and end up sending their CVs to the group, embarrassing themselves and amusing their bosses and colleagues, all of whom are generally part of the group.

Then starts a bout of either yahoo bashing or blaming the members who reply thus or asking the moderator to change the settings. But nothing else happens. Members still make the mistake, as they obviously will but more importantly Yahoo never wakes up to the problem.

Doesn't Yahoo India know about this? If not, why don't their designers lurk on India's most famous HCI forum? Or is it because Yahoo India's designers don't have much say within Yahoo? Or is Yahoo sleeping over the problems of its huge user base in India?

The solution to the problem isn't all that difficult. Several options can be tried out and here are some off-the-cuff ideas:
1. Right now the "Reply to" area and dropdown are not prominent and get lost amongst the other stuff around. It could be made prominent visually with help of graphics, color, etc.
2. A dropdown might be an obstruction itself in seeing the other options and therefore an inappropriate choice of widget. Other options can be explored based on number of options possible.
3. Rather than having a dropdown and then a "Send" button, there could be both "Reply to sender" and "Reply to group" buttons explicitly located.

I am sure a few iterations of options tested with users will help arrive at a better solution than the obvious nuisance we have today.

Jerry, you'd better wake up and take notice or else forget competing with Google.

Why Google should be careful...

"With great power, comes great responsibility"...this memorable Spiderman quote is getting relevant for Google now, as it was relevant for Microsoft until sometime ago.

I am sure the guys at Google are happy with their new found power, but they need to be careful about using it, as they go on to become the information superpower of the world.

In the next few years (if they have not done already) Google should be able to maintain an information catalog of not only what information people access, but how, where and more. They will also soon be able to map these data patterns to actual identities of people (via orkut for example) and create a virtual database of who, where, how and so on.

Now this might seem attractive to Google's scientists and business guys, but then there are issues. While ownership of patterns of user behavior and using that to provide services may be acceptable to users, ownership of people's identities may not be acceptable. The line between crossing this critical threshold is thin and Google needs to carefully formulate their vision in this context. Much loved Google can soon become much hated.

The internet has done something that world leaders and governments have never wanted to do - break boundaries and create a free world - a true democracy. It has provided people the power to "communicate" and "express" across barriers of geography and social boundaries. This experience of freedom has led to the opening up of minds and a realization of identities beyond the traditional ones of country, religion and local community.

People have now started to carve out both personal and multiple community based identities, that are based not on geography but on personal likes and dislikes. Google and others would be well advised to understand that this social phenomena provides a particular direction for the future - you need to give people ownership of their identities, expression and communication. The space Google and others should and can position themselves in, is that of providing the necessary interfaces and services to help people express and communicate their identities.

This above formulation of "identity networks", will of course, extend to personal identity and community-based identity and expression. However, it will not be a rigid formulation, but an amorphous one with the networks themselves becoming the data-centers interconnected by interfaces provided by service providers like Google and others.

This might well extend beyond the virtual into the real world, with our non-internet social transactions soon being formulated similarly. Large corporations might soon be called upon to give up ownership of material assets to "identity networks" while earn from offering services that facilitate the networks themselves. Employment should give way to shareholding and collaboration.

We are entering a more equal world - the powerful would do well to responsibly facilitate this process by anticipating this change and creating an "inclusive" vision of the world.

Interaction Design and Web 2.0

A lot of my friends ask me about Web 2.0 and talk of it as if its the next big thing. But is it really? Or rather what is that makes it the next big thing?

IMHO, the most comprehensive understanding of it is available at:
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html?page=1

A reading of the above tells me that the implications for a designer are large or small based on how she has been doing design. As a core discipline, in design, to question the existing and innovate is not a new concept. Hence, to re-invent the way the web is used is not a big thing. To make the interface or user experience richer is not a new thing.

What then is new?
1. Technology - Its a big shift for the techies to think that the web itself can be thought of as a platform. And then to use technologies based on this platform to design scalable, robust applications that handle loads of data is a big mind-shift. Once the techies "get the idea", the designer now has available to her the tools and the implementation inclination that will help her convert the designs into reality.

So now, the designer can try out the effects and transitions that rival a real life simulation and be positive that technologies exist that will help implement those interactions. The techie on the other hand is now willing to try out hyped up AJAX technologies and frameworks, besides a host of proprietary as well as open-source stuff like Flex and OpenLaszlo.

The only problem though is that in India some of the good programmers still consider these technologies as UI stuff as against "core" programming languages like Java and C++. The flip-side is that stuff like Flex and Laszlo require good programming skills and a highly creative problem solving mind.

2. User participation - This is a shift for all. The differentiation between a content provider and a content consumer is now blurred. The design now allows the user (the erstwhile "content consumer") to generate and use the content. The benefits are of transparency and a more realistic context. The disadvantage is that it requires a "long tail" to filter out junk that comes with open participation.

The concept of participatory design though is great news in terms of bringing user experience to a new level providing more engagement and greater transparency. This concept has the potential to alter the user engagement models in many a domain and make it more dynamic and realistic.

Infact the best way to beat Google in the search domain is to move away from algorithmic refinement of search to user refinement. And believe me there are a bunch of mavericks out there who are doing that already.

Frankly, besides these 2 points worth noting, I guess the other concepts are an endeavor that every designer would anyway be called me make. Hence, for the interaction designer, Web 2.0 should mean the technology that affords richer interactions, but more so, the motivation to provide direct and transparent user involvement in the application, by design.

There is one simple thing though - the next version of the web, Web 2.0 if you call it, will be driven by the designer and her imagination.