Growing up, I deprived myself of the fascinating world of video games except an occasional Mario Brothers, Tetris or Prince of Persia session.

It was the summer of 2040. Cross cultural robotics was the hottest discipline on Earth and Mars. Robots had become very much part of the human ecosystem by 2025. They played a variety of roles, ranging from housekeeper, drivers (nah..the driverless cars in the past were not successful, other than with early adopters, because people did not feel confident about being driven with no clear demonstration of who was in control…that gave way to the hugely successful robot drivers !) heavy equipment operators , waiters, soldiers, security guards, gardeners, caregivers, news aggregators, cabin crew, pilots, delivery staff , travel agents, customer service agents, cleaners, etc.

Philanthropy is perhaps as old as mankind. Even in the most ancient recorded past, we come across many examples of philanthropic activities.

Do you ever feel like doing something meaningful for other people, but don’t know how? Does it bother you that some people have so much, and others so little? Do you want to make a difference? Then Equalize may be the app for you.

As a UX designer one of the most exciting and satisfying aspects of my job are the interactions I get to have with people from different corners of the world, in the course of user research - being invited into their homes and workplaces, being regaled with their life stories, and being guided through the fine dynamics at play in their ecosystems.

Need garden planning help? There’s a landscaping app for you.

Emotions are intrinsic to us. They add meaning to our life.

Globalization has made life easy for a large group of population. People have more disposable income and also have more access to new technologies.

As a first time visitor to a new place, it is not uncommon to lose one’s way around, especially if one is not familiar with the context.

Will there be national leaders in the future? Will a country have a Prime Minister or a President in the future?

Books and periodicals play an important role in our lives. Yet they are the unfortunate ones who have hardly undergone any design changes since their inception.

When it’s safe, clean and pleasant, walking is a great experience, but as any resident of Mumbai would know there are a the myriad of problems when you choose to get from one place to another by foot.

Design is an integral part of our life. In fact life itself is a small part of a grand design called the Universe. Design influences our everyday life to the extent that we may be able to say that we can take ourselves out of the design but we cannot take design out of us.

It was about 3am in India and I was scrolling my twitter feed, when I came across the first few tweets about the attacks on Westgate in Kenya. There was one particular handle, which seemed to be the most up to date, it was as though they were reporting from the site of the incident, to my horror they were. It wasn’t a news agency nor was it a citizen journalist and sure wasn’t a hostage, the tweets were from the perpetrators Al Shabaab through their ‘official’ handle @HSM_Press.

An article by my colleague Radhika got me thinking about the potential of establishing long term and large-scale change in peoples’ attitudes, through design.

I watched Before Sunrise many years ago and found an overwhelming desire to visit Vienna (which lives to date). Of late there have been many movies from across the world where the romanticism of a city adds a significant layer to the plot and makes the experience that much richer.

Thinking – a small word with big consequences. Our needs trigger our thinking; thinking, in turn, triggers action and our actions shape our world. Humanity revolves around this cycle.

Wake up at 6am.. freshnup in 15.. gulp up your breakfast.. wave a hi to god.. grab your lunch box and shoot out of your house by 8.55am. What if you leave your house by 9.00am instead of 8.55am?

Mumbai’s smelly seafront promenades are perpetually dotted with couples in various stages of making out. Once in a while, when local residents complain, the cops come and round everyone up.

In my last blog post, I presented a future scenario where organisations sourced all their UX products and service requirements from a digital supply chain.

As I walk through the streets of Pondicherry, a common sight I see almost everyday - empty cycle rickshaws.

Not many may agree with me, but I definitely do not agree with the experts who comment that Jugaad -- or Indovation or any other terminology you want to use – is hurting India. I see immense power in Indovation, which through positive deviance can actually transform India. It is universally agreed that few will always move faster than others in a developing world, but the best thing that can really happen is that many move faster, and Jugaad used along with positive deviance approach can certainly help in that direction.

There was a time not far back when localization became trendy. For the user, localization can be friendly and even amusing, to see an international brand trying to connect with and become the local person.

For those of us who grew up on a steady diet of Star Trek: Next Gen runs and re-runs (but were never Trekkies), Borgs were undebatably a threat. An alien race of cybernetic antagonists, Borgs were singularly in pursuit of emotionless, mechanical perfection through the assimilation of the “biological and technological distinctiveness of other species” into their own. In this, they were everything humans were not.

India is a country of contradictions. It’s a metaphor for Jugaad and Chalta hai. For outsiders as well as for insiders, it’s a country with a split personality disorder. Chalta hai has its own linguistic that requires separate space, but let me focus on Jugaad this time. One can debate over the systemic complacency inherent in Jugaad, but one cannot ignore it’s utility as a thought process.

Kalika is interested in exploring how users can get involved in designing their own experiences. She believes that all users in the future will also be creators, so UX will become all about crafting emotionally durable experiences and empowering individuals in their creations.

Jagriti Yatra is an ambitious annual train journey of discovery and transformation that takes hundreds of India's highly motivated youth on a 15 day national odyssey. The first Yatra took place in 2008. The aim of the Yatra is to awaken the spirit of entrepreneurship and the vision is to inspire young Indians to lead development.

I remember vacations I took with my parents as a kid. There was months of planning, excitement like there was going to be no tomorrow, a sense of pride if the location was even remotely exotic and cluelessness about almost everything.

To succeed and reach a place where one aspires to be, having equal opportunity and non-discrimination. Idealistic but everyone would want to attain this state of being in their lifetime known as American Dream.

A few days ago, we stopped at our usual dosa pitstop for a quick breakfast. When the bill arrived, it came sitting on top of a little flyer that entreated us to "Think. Eat. Save."

Home, to me, holds the most fascinating array of things that can be played around with in so many different ways.

Good visual design is pristine. It evokes emotions and creates a lasting impression. There is something mystical yet certain about visual design.

Let’s look at these three ‘stories’ about disrupting an existing system through technology, for a positive social outcome.

Design jargon is not exactly a recent phenomenon, but kind courtesy world wide web, it has been brought into the notice of our (designers) collective conscience.

Continuing from our previous post where I thought aloud (like a good UX professional) whether the future of global UX was going the N=1, R=G direction…this time I would like to visualize how N=1, R=G could manifest.

Let me confess I am not a big fan of conferences but when I attended Tedx at TEDxGolfLinksPark recently, it was inspiring enough to change my perception about conferences. The speakers at the Tedx event were motivating to the core. Each of the talks was immersive and engaging enough to disconnect you from your surroundings.

Man is a Social Animal remarked Aristotle; of course, this was well before the invention of the Household Television. John Logie Baird’s invention has been the fancy of many a dystopian pundit with visions of millions of people tuned to their ‘idiot boxes’ with little care for people around them.

Word of mouth remains the most powerful method of human communication. Human beings are social animals and share experience, stories, and information with each other on a daily basis.

I’ve got this flask that often draws a lot of flak. It’s just a double-walled stainless steel flask, which I love because it keeps water ice-cold just about all day long. And in a place as hot for most of the year as Pondicherry, for a person like me who needs cold water to quench thirst, this matters.