2015 in Review, and Hello 2016!

Is it any coincidence that New Year resolutions get way too much attention, than Year-end self reviews? Post from a friend, inspired me to reflect on my past year. So, here is my self-assessment of the year gone by:

What went right?

1. Travel: Went solo backpacking this year. Got other avenues to travel domestic and abroad, a mix of official, leisure and treks.
2. Focus on Interests: Found time to focus more on areas of interest - Data, Technology, Startups & Design. Could start connecting with the community on these areas.
3. Writing: Got back to blogging & maintained a decent rhythm through the year.
4. Social network: New-found connect with Twitter that helped focus on areas of interest and with people to track; though need to carefully balance this away from becoming an addiction.
5. Movies: Watched a good set of Movies, including top rated regional ones.

What went wrong?

1. Poor execution: Did not really track against the yearly plan that I had put together at the start of year.
2. Insufficient Reading: Continued to accumulate too much of stuff to read, but didn't devote enough time for most of it, including books.
3. Sub-optimal self-organization: Better prioritization & time management scream for attention.
4. Inefficient housekeeping: Not too happy with the way I've re-organized internal stuff such as notes, pictures, videos, articles and other things of interest.

Perhaps, goes without saying that for 2016 I need to continue with the 'rights' and fix the 'wrongs'. That's pretty much what I look forward to in the coming year.

"Let no one discourage your ambitious attitude. You don't need a fan club to achieve your goals. Be your own motivation." - Unknown

An unusual night ride on the highway

Couple of weeks back, one Sunday night I was driving back home, on the Mumbai Highway in Hyderabad. Considering it was late in the night and close to 10 PM, the road was largely empty except for few trucks and heavy vehicles, that were on their way to destinations far away. Driving on a regular route amidst familiar roads, I was on auto-drive mode, with minimum attention necessitated for the road, while my mind was half-occupied with a random set of thoughts.

And that was when, I got a mental alert to divert full-attention back on the road. There seemed to be unfamiliar object in the path. From a distance, it looked like a bright cloth flown away onto the highway, and fluttering on the road in the night's wind. Unsure if it was big enough warranting a diversion or a drive right-through, I moved ahead. Turning on the high beam, as a last minute decision, I decided to swerve around the road to avoid hitting it. The more I swerved, the longer it seemed to stretch and I pulled across more than half of the road to avoid it.

That's when, a sideways glance struck me with the horror sight - it was a lady's body lying apparently motionless, right across the breadth of the road. A couple of vehicles behind me were now past the body and had avoided it as well, but were speeding on. At this time of the night and with pitch darkness in the highway, some vehicle was sure to run over the body, even if it were lifeless. With a thousand thoughts rushing through my mind, I finally decided to pull over.

Hurriedly parking the car by the road-side, I ran back towards the body on the center of the road. By then, a couple riding a bike had pulled over and were moving towards the body as well. Signalling to the vehicles that were rushing on behind, we lifted the body and carried it to the deserted pavement. It was a lady who must have been in her mid-twenties, she had a deep cut in her forehead and was bleeding profusely. The lady wore a bright red salwar and looked like a part of the tribals who camp by the road side on the outskirts. Fortunately, there were signs of life, but she was unconscious. 

As we rested her on the pavement, the girl who was riding with her husband started cleaning up the wounds. By then, a small gathering had formed on the road-side around us. Quickly someone telephoned the ambulance and cops from the nearby police station. In about 15 minutes, the lady slowly started coming to her senses and could respond to some of the questions. Though unable to give emergency contact details, to everyone's horror she indicated that a known person had inflicted the wounds and thrown her onto the road.

As we were wondering what to do, a cop arrived. Enquiring us about the sequence of events, he tried getting the wherabouts and contact details from the lady. Though she wasn't fully conscious, she answered and provided some details. To add to the complication, the lady appeared to be in an inebriated state. With an ambulance on the way and the cop assuming control, the crowd slowly dispersed. Unsure, we hesitatingly left the place hoping the lady gets the needed attention and meets her loved ones. 

What an unusal night my ordinary day had turned into? Thanking my senses on avoiding the collission and for pulling over, I drove on to get back home.

Is Technology dumbing us down?

Scene-1:

Boarding a cab at Bangalore, I asked my Uber driver the direction towards Majestic railway station, to figure out if we had to take a U-turn. The cabbie didn't have a clue, and just keyed in the destination into his handheld map and waited for the route map to show up. This has been a common occurrence in the past few months, wherein the cab drivers don't have a directional sense of the destination, leave alone the exact route map. Is it any coincidence that this was always with Uber or Ola cabs?

Scene-2:

On a recent family pilgrimage to Vaishno Devi in Jammu, our family of 6 was doing the 16 km hike to the hill temple. Midway, we got split into 2 groups and lost track of each other amidst the heavy crowd. As all mobiles were deposited in the temple cloak room, and public announcements were to no avail, the only way to reunite looked like calling a common mobile number, in this case my sister's who was not travelling. One of the 2 groups remembered the number and called from a public phone to report location, while none in the other group could recall any of our relative's number. After a small ordeal, we were re-united, but the lesson was clear. Hasn't the convenience of mobile contacts & speed dialing made us forget numbers of even our loved ones?

Scene-3:

I double up usage of my email inbox as an activity tracker to track open actions through unread emails. Once while clearing up the inbox, I accidentally clicked 'mark all as read' and in an instant all my pending actions vanished into thin air. I was left clueless on where I needed to act next. Have you heard of colleagues mention about missing a meeting, since an event did not show up in his or her calendar? 

Haven't you personally faced something similar? Do such scenarios look increasingly familiar, of late? We are in an age where documents are auto-saved, urls are bookmarked, machine recommendations pop up for everything - what you might want to buy, who you would want to befriend, birthdays you shouldn't forget, news you might be interested in reading. With the touted Google-now and army of digital assistants, this is only going to get worse. Are we losing our natural instinct or means to search and fend for ourselves? Is technology slowly making us too dependent and inept? 

I'm in no way advocating against use of technology, since I'm very much a part of the tribe that prides itself on teaching machines to make decisions and 'simplify' things for humans.  Nor am I talking about a singularity or a post-apocalyptic world (end of active human cognition), though that looks like a distinct possibility. I'm only calling attention to the fact that our memory, senses and other natural instincts are getting dampened. We are becoming gleefully unaware of the world around us, unless we get a 'notification'. 

This could be avoided with little steps, without compromising on the convenience of technology. Once in a while, switch off the GPS and try driving on your own, to notice landmarks & keep your sense of direction active. For a couple of days every few months, delete important numbers and make yourself key them in to start remembering them. Every now and then take time to spend days, interact with people and recall events without technology's help, to keep your natural instincts sharp and well-oiled. This list can be expanded to cover every aspect of your life that leverages technology for convenience or productivity. Perhaps, this will even keep you prepared for the coming singularity! 

Making healthcare solutions exciting through Design

Marketing of healthcare services is a tough nut to crack. How do you communicate complex services to a lay audience? How can healthcare problems with morbid connotations be made palatable? Even if you manage these, how do you improve engagement level and brand recall by making this exciting?

Yashoda hospital has solved this quite innovatively, through refreshing ad designs, that use:

1. Creative symbolism to simplify the complexity of problems, 
2. Terse captioning with simple words to capture the essence of solution
3. Brilliant graphic design leveraging loads of white space

The big billboard ads put up by Yashoda hospital in various parts of Hyderabad in the past months were unmissable. Check out some of the more notable ones here:

All Pictures sourced from Yashoda hospitals channels on FB, Twitter, Google+

Chennai floods: when Human spirit outshone the Rains

Submerged houses.. (source)	..and flyovers weren't spared as well (source)

Chennai, Cuddalore and other northern parts of Tamil Nadu have been reeling under a monumental crisis, in recent times. Yes Tsunami was a big disaster that perhaps claimed more lives, but that was more like a hit-and-run case, whereas the Chennai rains have been giving a slow death by systematically strangulating the city, its infrastructure and the residents. 

Debates continue to rage whether this was less of a natural disaster, and more a man-made one due to inefficient urban planning, greedy profiteering by 'encashing' river beds, and costly inaction by officials in the critical few days leading up to the crisis. However, the immediate priority and focus has rightly been towards providing succor and rehabilitation for the people most impacted by this massive tragedy. 

"Adversity does not build character, it reveals it."

People in flood-affected areas have demonstrated great character in these testing times, by helping each other - whether it was by opening one's homes freely to host others, lending food / supplies or volunteering with search-and-rescue / relief management operations. Its remarkable that people did all this, while the water levels kept raising in their own homes. Someone joked that this is one tragedy where we've had more volunteers than victims! Such has been the spirit.

Celebrities, corporates and several organizations have been doing their part right from the well-known faces such as RJ Balaji, Siddharth to thousands of unknown individuals like Senthil Murugan  of Cuddalore, who have been selflessly devoting time to make a difference in their own ways. Its equally heartening to hear about several thousands who have come together from all parts of the country to lend a helping hand to the region.

Apparently, the power shutdown and total breakdown in telephone communications had further amplified the magnitude, by creating a panic situation. In today's mobile age, inability to reach loved ones for even an hour, amidst free-flowing bad news in the background heightens one's anxiety levels to the peak. The initial apathy by national media notwithstanding, this is an area where Social media came to the rescue and scored handsomely. Twitter hashtags to call out for urgent help, Facebook posts to coordinate relief work, Google spreadsheets to consolidate volunteer details worked magically by accelerating free flow of information, near real-time. However, technology does come with its limited down-sides, such as the circulation of stale information or the few instances of rumours doing the rounds - you wouldn't have missed the 'supposedly' pregnant lady in Mogappair who was 'in labor' for over 2 weeks, OR the crying, abandoned child searching for parents all over chennai OR the crocodiles doing their shopping rounds in T. Nagar!

The fight is not over, with more rains forecasted for Chennai. However, thankfully the major hurdle has been crossed, with complete awareness of the problem at hand, relief machinery in full swing and people being prepared for the upcoming rain spells. Here's wishing that everyone stays strong & safe, and perseveres for a speedy recovery!