Navjot Pawera's Blog » Goodies

Product Design – Mobile Apps

Admin — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 08:17:57 +0000

If you have never been to Vietnam, I have a few tips for you from my first ever trip there (to Saigon):

When paying, count your zeros
When counting your zeros, decimal comma is not the same as decimal point
Don’t leave your $30 t-shirt in your $15 a night hotel room
Ice in beer can prevent hangovers
Saigon Red beer is better than Saigon Green

I was in Saigon, Vietnam over the weekend for BarcampSaigon and I really liked it. Loved the food, the people, the weather & the barcamp. At the Barcamp, I spoke about my workflow for designing products – mobile apps to be specific. I’ve uploaded the slides from the talk for download here

Concept: Nokanta Clock

Admin — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 12:29:25 +0000

Having spent the last few months without a job, I have been setting up my own schedule and spending the days, more or less, as I pleased. On days when I would have nothing better to do, I spend time getting annoyed at the fact that I don’t have a set daily schedule. At this point I sit down and jot down a rough, hourly allotment of tasks to be followed over the next few days. It would almost always be on the following lines:

9am: Wake up
9:30am: Breakfast
10am-1pm: Computer time
1pm: Lunch time
2pm-3pm: Doodling time

… and so on

Following this would make me feel a bit at ease, but the luxury of leisure would eventually make me lose track after a few days. Eventually, I sat down and came up with a solution. I decided it was a lost effort to try and change the no-schedule daily life. So, I decided to change the clock.

The idea was to go through the day in a more leisurely manner, but still not feeling lost. (you might even want to read that as—trying to come up with a clock that would serve as the best excuse of losing track of time itself)

The Nokanta Clock (“kanta” in Hindi means “clock needle” and in Punjabi means “hour”) at a glance is meant to tell you how much of the day has passed. Giving you ratios of the day passed vs day left, instead of the hourly time. Of course, rather than making me follow a regimental schedule, this clock would allow me to go on through the day without having to worry about the lack of a schedule.

As an end note, it’s evident that this would not work in a time-based-deadline work environment, but it’s one of those things that I would really like to have on my wall at the office.

Usability & the Users

Admin — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 03:17:03 +0000

It’s been 3 months since I landed in Singapore and more than anything else, I’ve loved the company of the folks who hang out at HackerspaceSG. Last Saturday we got together for a GeekCamp Singapore—and it was great. Taking a slight divergence from Web Design/Development, this time I focussed my entire talk on usability and usability feedback mechanisms. I’ve updated my slides with the relevant links (do let me know if I missed anything ) and you can now download them from here.

I had a great time and I hope everyone else did too!

Gin + Tonic = Genius

Admin — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 09:09:50 +0000

Came up with the idea while sketching earlier today. Might make a series of these. (available in 1440×900 only for now)