Zoho CRM User Experience & Interaction Design Blog

Let me make it simple. There are 3 ways of implementing a new User Interface over an existing user interface.

1. Overnight Implementation- Replace the whole existing UI with the new UI
2. Phased Implementation- Replace the existing UI part -by-part over a period of time
3. Parallel Run - Offer both existing and new UI parallely. Let the users choose what they want.

Overnight Model:
This is somewhat similar to a suicide model, the users may welcome it or they will ignore it. If the latter happens, then you are out of business. But if they accept, then you need not worry about anything. You need to put less effort in maintenance and more effort in new features or enhancements. Use this model, only if you are in the Prototyping stage or your user base is very very less. Most mobile phone UI experience fit this model.

Phased Implementation:
This is the safest bet. Develop the features+UI and implement it stage by stage. The users will feel only subtle changes at a given time. Finally when the whole implementation is over, your user base will remain intact and it will be a smooth transition. The problem here is, radical changes are not possible and innovation is limited. Use this model if your software/product has a large user base and you don’t want to lose ur revenue. Desktop OSes are common example for this model.

Parallel Run Model:
Develop the new user interface and offer it as an option. Ex. Yahoo mail’s new UI model. At any time user’s should be able to switch to either UI. The advantage being, people can opt the model which they prefer. The con is, your effort will double. Whenever you introduce a feature, you should make sure it works perfectly in both UI. Using clever coding and optimized frameworks, you can manage this.

- Rajesh Sundaram

Ever since I started using Mobile phones, I loved two types of navigation buttons.

1. Joystick type 4way or 5way navigation button - Easy to operate using the thumb.
2. Bigger, easy to access 4 way click buttons. My favorite is still the Nokia 3310’s simple up-down button.

All other navigation buttons models are not easily accessible and most of time the time, either I slip or have to use my finger tips to access them, which is a bad usability. 99% of the mobile phone companies compromise usability for the sake of ‘design’.

- Rajesh Sundaram

Recently the Blind Date shows at Sathyam Cinemas is starting with a 10 minute program along with prizes were conducted by SS Music VJs. This week, it was Paloma, Gibran and some other gal. The first question is to tell something about Blind Date. The audience came up with some good catch phrases. But finally, a guy answered “A Blind can Date” and won the prize.

The second question is a 30 second continuous speech about a general topic. Pawan from the audience got the subject - “Gents Toilet” and he started immediately with “I entered the gents toilet and found this girl there and then I enetered the womens toilet and found this man there….. ” and so on. That was humorous and he got the prize.

The third question was to talk something about “Pizza” for another 30 secs. This time Gibran called “Ashwini” from the audience and after some “oh no.. i cant..i wont” stuff, she grabbed the mic. Though not impressive, she did managed to speak for 30 seconds and got the prize.

The final question was the “guess, wat movie today?”. Gibran and the other girl gave a couple of clues, but no one could guess that right. Finally someone managed to guess the name half right and he got the prize. I guess thats a jumbo pop-corn.

The movie screened yday was “Just my Luck”. Kinda okay types not bad not good. A good plot for kollywood screenplay writers. I am sure definitely this story will be cooked in some other flavor and released in Kollywood. Perhaps, vijay or bharath may do the ‘act’. Blind Date is mostly Bland date.

Now a days, watching movies in Sathyam cinemas is a punishment. You get to watch the same crappy Lalitha Jewellry, Prince Jewellry, iSteel, Textile India, advertisements again and again. The ultimate comedy is - the slide would say “Trailers”, but you will be watching advertisements again. Kinda cheating? Yeah!

May be down the line, I will reduce going to sathyam.

- Rajesh Sundaram

One of my favorite site is Intel.com. Reason? They still use the same trusted pattern (Left side navigation, Top tabs, right side related-links). It takes not more than 20 to 40 seconds to reach any deep destination from the home page.

And the IA is very decent, with easy access to any piece of information from any where (mostly) and no bloating. All the text contents are slim.. and fat contents can be downloaded as PDFs.

The navigation occupies most are at the top of the pages, but it still helps me to reach the information. In most of the complex sites you may be required to use the “Search” to find an information. But this is one of the few sites where I have used “Search” occasionally.

Personally I would rate 4.5/5 stars for accessibility and IA.  3/5 for visual design (Simple and not-distracting).

Zoho / AdventNet is looking for Design (DTP) people to work in their Marketing Division.

Position :
Designer - Publishing

Skillset required:
1.  Excellent command over Adobe Photoshop, and any of the page illustration and layout tools such as InDesign, Pagemaker, Illustrator, CorelDraw
2. Minimum 2 years of solid experience working in Print Design houses
3. Should have exposure in designing Signage, Brochures, Flex print banners
4. Good creative design/art skills

Responsibilities:
The candidate will work closely with Marketing Analysts, Product Managers and Marketing Manager, Print houses and prepare Brochures, Direct Mailers and Banners.

Interested people can send their resume to rajeshsundaram [at] adventnet [dot] com.

- Rajesh Sundaram