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!

Hyderabad Rockathon 2015

Last weekend was special, with GHAC's annual flagship event 'Rockathon'. True to its name, this is a fun outdoor event themed on rocks. In its 4th annual edition, this event has become quite popular over the years with kids and nature-outdoor enthusiasts in Hyderabad. Conducted at Ghar-e-Mubarak, close to the Golconda fort, this was co-hosted by the Hyderabad-based 'Society to save rocks', a uniqe organization that does great work in identifying and protecting the rocks by getting them declared as heritage sites.

Having heard quite a bit about this event, this was my first time and I took my family and friends along. With both my kids under-age as per the event guidelines, and with one of them young-enough and pushed around in a pram, we sure turned lots of heads around! It was a packed, fun-filled day with several activities lined up. 

We started with slack-lining, the fine art of balancing yourself and walking on a rope, the only saving grace being that the rope was tied at just 1 foot height. With adults struggling at this, the kids seemed to pick it up and do naturally; perhaps their natural instincts for outdoors are not urbanized fully yet. Rock-stacking involved creating the tallest structure by stacking up small rocks and pebbles. This provided a sneak-peak into the fascinating rock structures one sees in the city and how they could be balancing each other. And yes, our group did win a prize by building one of the tallest ones!

Slack-lining	Trail biking
Rock-stacking	...and a natural stack in formation

The treasure hunt themed around hunting for the right rock formations as given in a picture proved daunting, especially in the hot midday sun. There were several creative activities to the event's credit: rock shotput, trail-biking around the rocky terrain, a quiz to test knowledge on rocks & rock structures, and even a rock selfie contest! There was a lot of demand for zip-lining and rapelling, that was planned well and organized safely in the midst of the adjoining rocky hills. The event was complete with a workshop on snakes awareness, conducted by the popular Hyderabad-based 'Friends of Snakes' society. They demonstrated handling of non-poisonous and poisonous snakes, and provided useful tips and first-aid basics. With kids quickly developing comfort with snakes, they rushed in to touch and handle one of the less aggressive, non-poisonous varieties.

The green, tree snake	An extra-long rat snake

During the event, it was a pleasant surprise to bump into the 13-year old girl who holds world-records for climbing several tall peaks around the world, Jaahnavi. It was fascinating to learn from her father-and-guide on how Jaahnavi Sriperambuduru  started early, has persevered to set records and also about her #Mission7summit, the upcoming mission to climb all highest peaks in the 7 Continents. Wishing her luck, we signed off from the event.

Edit: Corrected typo in Jahnavi's name.

Great design of everyday things

Humming bird fork stand. Pic: Amazon

I came across this fork stand recently, and there was something about it that caught my attention at first sight. Its beautiful to look at, serves its purpose as a fork well and its quirky design makes you smile. The design is so intelligent that a set of forks kept stationary on the stand double up as a set of birds perched upon a tree, while the fork impaled and ready to be eaten looks like a humming bird feasting on a fruit!

Perhaps as David Norman explains in his book on Emotional Design, this caters to our senses at 3 levels - 'visceral' or 'the beauty aspect', 'behavioral' or 'utility & usability factor' and 'reflective' or the 'emotional connect'. The story-telling aspect of the design was amply reinforced by the fact that my 4-year old kid who refuses to eat fruits, now looks forward to his fruit-eating sessions, thanks to this fork set! 

When an online purchase goes wrong

After years of buying stuff online, I recently had my first dud transaction. I had ordered Amish Tripathi's "Scions of Ishvaku" and two other books on Amazon, about a month back. The order was to be serviced by three different sellers. I promptly got a confirmation and delivery of the 2 other books, however 'Scions of Ishkavu' order status progressed through various stages from 'being dispatched', 'reaching warehouse' and even 'out for delivery', but there was no physical trace of the order.

When I called up customer service after a few days, the service agent was extremely courteous, reassuring and promised to check with the courier company. But again, nothing happened, not even an acknowledgement of the service request. I eventually ended up talking to the service desk 4 times, and surprisingly every conversation was alike - very courteous, understanding, reassuring and with absolutely no action. In the final call when I persisted and threatened legal action, things finally moved. I got a complaint lodged as well, against the agents who had (mis)handled the case earlier.

This was a low value transaction with no urgency, yet it finally got onto my nerves. The large e-commerce players have many a chink in their armor, inspite of increasing maturity in their processes and million of dollars of investment into customer service and delivery. Once in a while, you do keep hearing of issues from friends about incorrect billing, order not getting delivered or even worse, getting a lemon when you order high-value electronic items. However, online is the way forward for consumers and e-commerce companies should speedily fix those odd issues in their workflows.

PS: Yesterday, I got an email from the bank confirming that a refund has been my initiated on this transaction. But, the surprise this time was that the credit had been done for all 3 books, not just the one undelivered. I'm just getting a request raised for payment of the 2 other books, and I wonder how much time Amazon would take for this credit back to them!

Festival season Greetings

The 2 months from mid-September through mid-November is one of my favorite periods during the year. This part of the calendar has dates marked for several festivals ranging from Ganesh Chathurthi, Janmashtami, Dusshera, Navarathri and Diwali, and they often occur back-to-back. With festive spirit strongly in the air, sweets to share, and lots of holidays to spare, this is fun time indeed.

Wishing everyone a Happy and Prosperous Diwali! Charge up your batteries for a Successful Year ahead!!