digital curry

Some of you may be aware of the interesting research done by Dr. Anders Ericsson around the theme of "Acquisition of Expert Performance and Deliberate Practice" An important finding is that it normally takes 10,000 hours of practice to become expert in any discipline. Of course, I can imagine this would vary a lot depending on kind of practice and how it builds on your earlier skill. So I did some quick behind the napkin math: 1. Practice Required = 10,000 hours Assuming a concentrated effort to put at least 4 hours of practice into honing your expertise in your chosen field - the other being taken up by other information tasks (e.g. did you know a large part of the so called “information work” is actually searching for information? – fun fact I gathered while working on Enterprise Search ) 2. Time required to gain that expertise = 10,000/4 = 2500 days 3. Which makes it about 7 years to gain expertise in a discipline. Interesting!

Today I learnt about this beautiful Japanese concept of "Mono No Aware". My understanding of it is derived just from English interpretation of it but it's such a beautiful concept that regardless of words or their essence to capture it I think I know quite well the feeling those words are trying to capture. Literally, it can be translated as "the 'ahh-ness' of things", life, and love. The feeling it tries to convey is the feeling of wistfulness, the deep joy touched by that hint of sadness at the awareness of impermanence of things. The awareness that the joy and beauty in the current moment is transient - and in a way that makes that moment even more special, but also knowing that the moment is going to pass and the best you can do is live that moment and cherish it to the most. There are moments where you come across something - a term, an explanation, a description - and your first reaction is "Yes, that's happened to me before!" And t...

Do posts that start or end with smart quotes feel smarter? I'll leave you to answer that but start with a quote from Einstein anyway: "Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity." One of the fun parts of working as a Design Researcher is thinking deeply about how people perceive things. Time is one of those things. With interactivity and flow being such an integral part of today's applications this becomes even more important. So this week I'm spending some time trying to understand perceptions of time and what an experiment design to measure some of the questions I am interested in might be. One interesting thing I learnt about were the two classic theories of time perception: 1. The Internal Clock Model 2. The Attentional Gate Model The internal Clock model roughly underlines the fact that humans/animals are capable of learning the temporal structure ...

While researching something about blogs I came across this bit of research on why people blog. 1. Blogs as documents to “journal my life” 2. Blogs as commentary: A point of view, not just chatter 3. Blogs as Catharsis: “Me working out my own issues” 4. Blog as muse – Thinking by writing 5. Blogs to build community: “Getting in conversation with each other electronically" I guess my primary motivation (if you can call such sporadic posts motivation ;) ) would lie around 1 and 2. Yours?

Writing this from Incheon airport and am a little tired after last night in Seoul so this is going to be a little garbled or if you'd like to give me a lot of credit - my experiment with 'stream of consciousness' writing. Loved the vibrant energy and buzz of the Myeong-Dong district yesterday. In a strange way it reminded me of the places like the mall road, or tibetian market in Nainital - not in the way they visually or physically resemble each other but in some way the experiences they evoke seems based around the same concept and the flow of people is similar - shops on both sides with people in a fused browsing-shopping mode and shops ranging widely from one to the next. This stop over at Seoul was kind of unexpected. It's a long story but somehow me - and another girl just as confused as me ;) - somehow didn't realize the flight was the next evening and not that evening. So we found ourselves with a day and a half in Seoul! The first thing that struck me was h...

I'm a strong believer that who we are shapes a lot of our decisions. So assuming that hypothesis is true, let's try to look at two roles from two major bollywood actors: Aamir Khan and Shahrukh Khan. The purpose to try to see how how they perceive themselves - or project themselves if you will - based on what appeals to them in a role. The two roles we'll look at are - Shahrukh as Kabir Khan in Chak De India and Aamir Khan as Ranchoddas (Rancho) in 3 idiots. Take Racho's character, A genius , who believes the right way is to chase excellence and not success (box office?) which will chase after you if you excel at what you do. The traditional system doesn't understand him and resists his ways at first but ultimately he proves his mettle. Interesting to note that Aamir's characters doesn't do badly in the courses but tops it - despite doing things against the system, and eventually is very 'successful'. If you remove the context of the movie from the a...

It was around 11 pm in Rome. It was summer so there was still a blush of light but it was that time where the night life was vibrant and living and throngs of people partying made the entire place so lively and wonderful. I was with a group of friends and we'd drunk a couple of bottles of wine - umm or maybe three :) The wine had just started to get to my head 0 It was the kind of buzz where you start to get a nice warm feeling inside and the conversation around you gets livelier without actually meaning too much to you. We ate dinner at the restaurant and stepped out into the lively streets or Rome. We were walking to get some dessert - I think- and then it happened. Just when we were about to cross the street. It's hard to say how long it lasted - it still does in memory but probably not too long. I think I first smelt her fragrance before I actually saw her. And then I heard something to my side and realized my friends had a big "REALLY!" smile. I turned and looke...

I just finished reading an article on leadership that talked about six different leadership styles and in what situations to apply each. The article didn't resonate with me at all. While trying to deconstruct something into its elements and trying to analyze those pieces to understand a style can be a useful problem solving technique it doesn't always work well; especially when dealing with more abstract concepts like emotions or motivation. Such technique can be very limiting at its best and way off the mark at the worst. Also a lot of journals and management articles make leadership to be some some abstract, out there concept that frankly sounds boring and burdensome. I think leadership is fun. I think you need to have been around a leader , and reflect on your times around him to truly understand leadership. A leader does more than getting work done - he affects you profoundly and leaves you wanting to be like him. A good way to think about it is to take a walk down memory ...

I intend to try the forced choice paradigm in one of my upcoming usability studies along with a payoff scheme. Looks like it would be more useful in a formative study but I definitely think we can use this to test some features of the interface even at a later level.

This weekend is Salmon days in Issaquah and despite the horribly rainy day I enjoyed visiting the local hatchery and talking to a few people from F.I.S.H. (Friends of Issaquah Salmon Hatchery). Going for salmon days was quite a no-brainer, since the moment I stepped out of my cute house, I'm in downtown Issaquah right where the Salmon days celebrations are going on. The story of Salmon's is fascinating as I learnt today! Salmon's are in fresh water and then migrate to the Ocean for a period of 4-5 years where they mature and then return home (homecoming!) travelling miles and miles of Oceans,seas and lakes, typically to the streams where they were spawned to reproduce. This is the last stage of their life and after laying the eggs they soon die. It's fascinating that they travel all that distance to be back they were born. Even more intriguing is the way they get there. There is apparently no conlusive answer, but I was told today the friendly and knowledge docent at ...

So I'm back on my blog after a really long time. There are quite a few reasons, some legitimate and some that I make up to feel better about my not posting quite often enough. Either way: here are a few random things to get started again. Probably inspired by the thought of "quantity over quality". Not that I approve of the thought (or disapprove of it) or to suggest that this post is sub-quality. 1. I spent the weekend in the lab! Why ? Hardware woes! I installed Vista x64 on my swanky quad core 8 GB machine and spent a couple of days customizing the machine only to find that the the eye tracking analysis tool that I needed to install for my most recent eye tracking study wouldn't install on a 64 bit machine. The labs were all occupied during the week so I had to go to the lab on the weekend to analyze the data. The software was horrible! I'm inclined to believe that software is probably the only industry where a product as buggy as that can be sold. I can't ...

Just came back from the closing plenary address by Bill Buxton at the CHI 2008 conference here in Florence, Italy. It's been quite a hectic week - with 20 hours of student volunteering, lunches, dinner parties and a smattering of completing assignments in bits and pieces thrown in. Florence is charming. It's got a charm about it, the streets, the air, the life in the city - almost purposeful and poetic at the same time. It was also fun to meet again with people form the Office Design Group at Microsoft including my manager during the internship! I also met with lots of people whose papers I'd read not knowing woh they really are. Oh, Natasha and I also ran into Jonathon Grudin late last night looking for directions while we were getting some icecream! We didn't make it to the final four teams at the Student Design Competition ( I must say I hated the part where the time for judging was not allocated uniformly and we got the short end of the stick on that one). One of t...

Not bad, I'm posting the second day in a row like I promised myself yesterday - surprising myself! Things that happened Today: 1 surprising thing: I actually made good on my resolution to write this entry today. New Things I learnt: 1. one deviation principle for finite and infinite repeated prisoner dilemma games and their implication in reputation systems 2. Vulnerabilities in the $_FILES variable in php 3. Walrasian equilirbium and how we can use leverage competitive analysis in the design of agents. 4. Some surprising heuristics that can be useful in a game where strategic agents act as stabilizing factors. 5. Some dutch words :) 1 Adventurous thing I did today: Nothing ....darn! Something inspirational I read today: A good story starts with something simple, takes you somewhere you don't expect to go and leaves you with something you cannot forget.......profound :) I should go to bed.....its almost 2:00 am and I have class in the morning

Reading diaries you write years later is an illuminating experience. Not only does it take you down the memory lane - but seeing yourself from an outsider's perspective tells you a lot about yourself. It's also a learning experience because you realize that things that seemed so important then don't matter so much now, and things that seemed trivial then are the things you treasure so much today. So to gift myself those moments later in life I've decided to write something each night. Of course, I've bravely and foolishly resolved to do this earlier too each time failing but inspired by the adage that "If you fail once, try something different" i'm going to post each night with a specific goal. Even on the busy nights i'll write a short note on something new I learnt in the day, or something else that moved me. Tonight I have two things to jot down: 1. One I read a couple of fascinating articles on the injection method in Ruby and the different th...

I've been away from my blog for so long I almost started to miss it. The last couple of weeks have been pretty hectic. I've been working from 6:00 pm to 3:00 am almost every night in the past week. The night-outs were mainly to get our poster for the CHI 2008 student design competition submitted. Now, that we've submitted it - things should get just a little bit better - or maybe i'm speaking too soon! Back to work and maybe today i'll get to sleep by 1:00 am :)

The class brought together the concepts learnt in class throughout the semester. Seeing them applied in various contexts in the projects which were presented in class before was useful in building confidence and more proficiency in learning how to apply the framework in different situations. I had seen the IDEO video before in an earlier class on design methods. There it was mostly about how to gather user needs and requirements and synthesize them to design products. Therefore, it was all the more interesting to look at it now from a experience centric perspective. It's interesting to note here that most technology companies (amongst others I'm sure) now have some sorts of groups focussing on user experience. More often than not user experience is thought to automatically follow if you design a good product. The IDEO video, and it's discussion in the light of looking at it by 'putting on the co-creator's hat' brings this point nicely into perspective. While a g...

So my bicycle journey's weren't always dreaming about difficult things. For those of you who have never been to Lucknow, it has a really nice area called Hazratganj which is a popular hangout for everyone in Lucknow. Luckily, I lived at a 5 minute walking distance from there. I was living in a room in an apartment, a couple of other students preparing for a medical exam were sharing the apartment with me- and one of them introduced me to "ganjing" or something like that - which basically meant when you're exhausted with studying you go and stroll around the place and grab a bite at one of the popular restaurants there. The other attraction was in the evening you got to see a lot of girls :) ! I read the Godfather quite a while back but I remember there is a mention of a "thunderbolt". It's when you see a girl and at first glance you're totally mesmerized, speechless, hypnotized........ I was returning from a Maths class when the "thunderbolt...

I was riding my bicycle back from college today, with the cool Michigan wind sending a gentle shiver through my body, and I was reminded of the days I was in Lucknow, cycling my way back after the tutorial classes for the joint entrance exam late at night. I have so many fond memories of my bicycle :). I had scheduled my classes in such a way that my Maths and Chemistry classes fell on Monday, Wednesday and Friday and Tuesday and Thursday I got most of the day to myself with only physics classes. However, my tutorial class for chemistry was around 8 kilometres away from my Maths class and I would hang around with friends solving some maths problems for an hour or so after the maths class and head off for the Chemistry class. The class ran from 7pm to 10pm. The teacher was excellent and taught at his home and I had to cycle back to the apartment I was staying at after 10:00 pm through Aminabad which was super crowded in the evenings but relatively less crowded at night - although it sti...

So I just read about the announcement of the awaited OpenSocial from Google.There has been so much of talk and hype around Social Networks that people have started throwing around the name and all sorts of sites have come up with their own "flavour" of social networks, pretty much disregarding for most of the time what's really happening. A way for people to connect with others in different spheres of life, extending the interactions that are limited distance and availability. I'll have to still read more about the service to form some concrete opinions about the service itself but its approach seems bang on! Here's why: What's really happening are Three things we've known for ages. 1. Sharing of information makes it more valuable (as long as its not scandalous love letters or something similar - which btw is an important consideration here since i've personally been asked to take a couple of survey where HR people seriously considered the merits of us...

Around two years ago I started a community on Orkut, the Google social network, "Vedas the science and beyond" because I wanted to learn more about the Vedas from others far more knowledgeable than me and have a platform for discussion of issues. My vision of that of a community where people could discuss, question and learn from an objective look at the Vedas. This was based on two observations: 1. Having talked to quite a few people I'd met and who could have known about the Vedas I didn't find satisfactory answers to most questions I had. Perhaps it was my ignorance or their blind belief without an understanding of the Vedas that left me utterly confused. Either way it called for a different solution to try to learn - hence a platform where different people could discuss. 2. The second was giving people a chance to talk about it so that more people are aware of such a valuable heritage left to us by our ancestors. I remember logging into the community every day and...