online

‘Axone’ Serves The Understated Hatred So Tastefully

June 13, 2020 Movies
Axone

The savagery of racial injustice has come to haunt humanity, yet again, with the brutal murder of George Floyd, 46, on the streets of Minneapolis in broad daylight. The incident instantly made headlines because law enforcement agencies were involved while a 17-year old had the presence of mind to film the brutality on her phone. These bellicose emotions often hurled towards visible minorities is no less ‘xenophobic’ in nature — from the Greek Xenos, meaning “stranger” or “foreigner”, and Phobos, meaning “fear”. In short, it’s a fear or hatred of that which is perceived to be foreign or strange. On those lines, Axone (‘Aa-Koo-Ne’) is a praiseworthy narrative and an attempt to address that systemic xenophobic mentality towards the culture and the people from the North-Eastern states of India. Also, I love movies that are made with the capital city of India, New Delhi, as a backdrop, and I assure you that there are only a few of them.

By the way, I’d suggest not reading any further than this if you haven’t watched the movie yet (it’s playing on Netflix right now) and if you don’t want the spoilers to ruin all the fun.

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Why Are Online Portfolios Suddenly Vanishing?

March 21, 2020 Design

Nothing personal but it’s worth observing this recent phenomenon of certain designers maintaining online portfolios in private, and it’s a question that has baffled me the most. Until I meet someone who has kept the ‘daggers’ hidden under a cloak of secrecy I will never get conclusive evidence. I was reading an interesting and highly insightful article on Medium from a UI/UX designer talking about grid systems for mobile/desktop UI designs. There was no doubt in my mind that this individual had done immense research to validate an approach of using a grid system, and I was impressed enough to look at his body of work. His online portfolio link had been provided but my eagerness soon turned into despair when I found everything except for the design work was public! After creating an impression with your writing and intellect why would you want to hide your designs? And this isn’t the only instance where I found the portfolio ‘locked up’ for a private viewing it’s become a trend.

It defeats the entire purpose of maintaining an online portfolio that is meant to be accessible 24/7 and aimed at like-minded designers, peers, and most of all, recruiters and employers who might be looking for a talent like yours. Online portfolios can be a great way to project your individual talent not just for exploring job opportunities, and for the industry at large to comprehend what a design process resembles in an individual’s capacity! But the core question still remains unanswered – why are designers turning secretive all at once?

  • I believe there are a couple of factors and the most important one feels like the designer’s work for an organization is covered by an IP or a non-disclosure agreement. Designers aren’t allowed to showcase their visual thinking process in public without breaking the law and it’s a precarious situation they find themselves in all the time. So it’s only inevitable that they strictly make their work ‘on-demand’ to skillfully dodge the scrupulous eyes of the employer. So this applies to specific client work, but what about side projects which are independent of an employer’s discretion?
  • Another version could be to prevent employers, recruiters, and peers or colleagues from unfairly judging their work. UX is a pretty subjective domain having a nuanced process that’s dictated by the culture of the company. For instance, designing a ‘persona’ could end up within multiple formats across the industry and could still make sense in their individual capacities. If employers or recruiters were seeking to judge the designer on the basis of the perception they carry about a standardized ‘persona’ format they might well be disappointed. In such a case, candidates may prefer discussing the portfolio on a personal level by blocking access to the portfolio.
  • In relation to my previous point, some designers may also have a misguided personal view about their own work, finding it archaic and unfit for public viewing.
  • And lastly, some designers, in general, might be scared their work is at risk of getting plagiarized.

Be as it may, portfolios in any form are actually articles to be judged. They’re also seen as a ‘gateway’ to your innermost beliefs and design thinking processes, and might largely differ with an individual’s mindset. But it’s critical that that difference should be presented boldly and to position your unique qualities in the market. Aiming to build a career in design I miss the point and find no logic or prudence in keeping your talent confidential. The mantra should always be to stay open-minded, invite diverse opinions, and spreading the knowledge of design.

There’s Nothing Savoury At Shank’s

December 9, 2019 Movies
Shank's

I don’t review movies I haven’t enjoyed, especially the Marathi movies which I’m so fond of watching and which rarely disappoint me if I’m making the right choices. I made an exception for Shank’s (2017) because it was masqueraded as a movie on Marathi cuisine but the entire concept turned out to be the Ass in a Lion’s skin.

So it all started in a true documentary style, showcasing the gastronomic creation of a New-York based fine dining restaurant called ‘Shank’s’. In what I would call, a ‘Chef’s Table’ approach, the eatery is shown serving regular Marathi food — ‘Varan-Bhaat’, ‘Puran Poli’ et al presented lavishly in plates and called “Marathi fine-dining” cuisine. No doubt I was filled with pride! I could never imagine common Maharashtrian food settling in distant American plates as “fine-dining” cuisine. ‘Varan-Bhaat-Toop’, ‘Ukdiche Modak’, ‘Tival’, ‘Batatyachi Kachri’, ‘Kokum Kadhi’, ‘Sabudana Wada’, and several other appetizing fares (some of them Konkani) are part of my staple diet even today, and they continue to delight my soul without all that extravagant pretentiousness of “fine dining”. Who cares, but seeing them now being transformed into some uptown culinary delights made me think Marathi food had finally arrived on the global food scene and so much could be done to elevate the experience. So I was glued to the screen even more.

It was all attributed to the success of a passionate Maharashtrian chef called ‘Shashank Joshi’, raised in a lower middle-class family, an intelligent guy and an IIT dropout (therefore, “intelligent”) from India, who visited France to learn culinary art from a renowned French chef running his own restaurant. Soon Shashank decides to settle in the US of A with his pretty French wife Pauline — the daughter of his mentor & chef, and he starts his restaurant business called ‘Shank’s’, it’s immediately trashed by food critics. After much deliberations he introduces an innovative fine dining experience with Maharashtrian cuisine. His inspiration for Marathi food? None other than his late grandmother from whom he picked the cooking skills while growing up in a Maharashtrian neighbourhood.

The story depicts a humble Maharashtrian guy who is inspired by his grandma’s culinary skills and transforms Maharashtrian food into a fine-dining experience. The biggest flaw with the movie is that it shouldn’t have been masquerading as a biographical documentary with interviews, reviews, customer comments, etc. when the entire act was fiction.

The supposed movie/documentary features interviews with food critics, including Shashank’s cousin and his wife Pauline who swear by his passion for food, his hard work, and his single-minded focus on serving the best dishes on the menu. During this 1 hour 12 min tiresome show we are taken through his childhood memories through some sketches depicting his memories, more interviews and some more sketches, then some doodles of Maharashtrian food (sort of a hierarchical menu), and ending with more sketches. Finally when it all concluded my delight turned into disgust within no time. To my bewilderment, I learned that there’s no restaurant called ‘Shank’s’ in NYC, there’s no fine-dining chef in existence called ‘Shashank Joshi’ and even his so-called French wife Pauline was a figment of someone’s fantasies, and so obviously the innovative Maharashtrian fine-dining culinary cuisine only existed in my imagination for that entire hour. In short, the whole thing was an act and it was faked. Period.

I wonder what the makers of the movie were smoking when they conceptualized in making this into a movie. Because on one hand, I was so proud to finally see Maharashtrian menu getting its due respect and fame as a ’fine dining’ affair outside its traditional roots. On the other hand, it was hard for me to believe that everything I saw and felt as a proud Indian was a big hoax being sugar-coated and fed to me. Though I wonder if this could have been made into a real documentary, such as, representing Maharashtrian traditional food with a proposed ‘fine dining’ approach, plain and simple, without resorting to cheating the audiences and making a farce of the concept with inept actors. Beyond that, watch Shank’s only and only if you’re really in a mood to fool yourself and waste an hour of your precious life. Hit the ‘skip’ button. There’s nothing worth relishing here.

Retail Space

Challenges With Using Self-Checkouts

June 30, 2019 Design Technology

Shoppers are increasingly becoming proficient in using technology and automation is entering retail spaces already. My own assessment of the self-checkout machines — the kiosks that help speed up billing at a reasonably lesser space, has been positive, and that it helps clear the shopper lanes quickly thereby streamlining the sales cycle. Although, when I visit this local store, I have observed, the customers aren’t judged well while using the self-checkouts. In fact, some of the cashiers quite blatantly confide that one should use the cash counters thereby sparking a moral debate around the installation and use of self-checkout kiosks. Many fear that these machines would eventually create job losses.

We have to understand the purpose of this rapid change which has psychologically affected store employees and fuelled the debate of ‘humans vs machines’ yet again. This particular big brand store is located within a busy mall and experiences medium to heavy traffic during most parts of the day. The natural response in this scenario would be to keep the traffic flowing is to increase the cash counters and employ more cashiers, although, despite having 6 counters sometimes the line just goes haywire and customers have to wait endlessly for their turn. Moreover, the space constraints inside the store prevent the management from adding more counters with a suitable area for movement.

There are various emotional challenges in dealing with the issue of using self-checkout kiosks. Often times I have waited for at least 10-15 minutes at the counter and the excruciating wait-times has bothered me to a large extent, in which case, I have either left without completing the purchase or reconsidered my decision and removed some items from the cart. In other scenarios, customers needed privacy to discreetly buy items without the fear of being judged. This means that external factors, such as wait times and individual privacy, could have a negative influence on a consumer’s purchase decision and hurt revenue streams in the long run. Large grocery stores, such as Food Basics and No Name, have a separate counter for 10 or fewer items which is served by a representative yet it does not solve the problems I stated above. Moreover, there are contextual factors that could be preventing them from rolling out the self-checkout machines.

Self-checkout machines are now a common feature across several Canadian big box stores and watched over by attendants, such as Walmart, Shoppers Drug Mart, IKEA, Loblaw, and Canadian Tire. These stores have an influx of customers at most times of the day and the role of the machines could be viewed as easing the pressure of manual billing on the cashiers and putting the onus of the purchase on the customers. Although it has been a challenge for some shoppers to transition to the self-checkout model for several reasons ranging from old age issues to technical glitches, even interaction issues arising out of an unclear or cluttered and disparate use of user-interface design languages — every brand has their own interpretation of shopping items and purchase rules that can confuse consumers while using the kiosk’s user-interface in the checkout process. Perhaps a uniformity in overall systems design could help resolve the crisis. However, it’s evident that grocery and retail stores are eager to roll out self-checkout kiosks to address the latent needs of the tech-savvy millennials also based on their spending behaviour. In a study, Accenture has predicted that by 2020 Millennials will account for nearly $1.4 trillion in spending power. And moreover, despite the ease of online shopping, a large number of millennials continue to prefer visiting bricks and mortar over websites.

It’s obvious that retail stores aren’t doing enough to address the insecurities of its store employees who continue to look negatively at the rising trend of self-serve kiosks. One solution is to leverage their respective loyalty programs to benefit customers by giving discounts and bonus points on select products, thereby encouraging greater customer influx in keeping the stores busy. In such a scenario, the role of cashiers or sales executives would continue to be critical in enhancing the customer experience and influencing buying decisions as much as self-serve kiosks. Their involvement at every step of the customer buying process would stimulate a positive environment. Although the inevitable shift is towards automation their subjective functions should not be abandoned for the sake of the machines.

The Difference Between URLs and URIs

January 26, 2016 Technology

I had, for decades, referred anything residing online as a ‘file’ and its address as a ‘URL’ to be accessed from the browser. However, I uncovered an interesting truth in my online research with a term called ‘URI’ or ‘Uniform Resource Identifier’:

One can classify URIs as locators (URLs), or as names (URNs), or as both. A Uniform Resource Name (URN) functions like a person’s name, while a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) resembles that person’s street address. In other words: the URN defines an item’s identity, while the URL provides a method for finding it.

The article further states that the term ‘URL’ has become or is becoming deprecated. Though it shows examples of a URI which it says, can also be called a URL, causing confusion. Furthermore, we don’t know the design implications of using the URI/URL terms intermittently, which usually takes a while before it enters popular tech lexicon. Considering this, and to avoid a confusing situation (or spark a debate in a meeting or chat), I would suggest using ‘URL’ for now.

Source: The Difference Between URLs and URIs