Reading and Writing Smarter
While looking up an old blogging account of mine, I stumbled upon a RattL 'em idea from many years ago. I had made a suggestion to Google, sometime in Feb., 2013 regarding composing of emails.…
Category: Design Thinking
What if We could Mute Serial-Forwarders on WhatsApp Groups
A recent ‘RattL ’em‘ idea was for Will Cathcart and Matthew Idema at WhatsApp. Through the lockdown, a lot of people began spending considerable time on WhatsApp. And some, let's call them 'serial forwarders', dump…
Idea for a Review Mode for Note-taking and Planner Apps
A recent 'RattL 'em' idea was for Note or Planner apps like Evernote, Google Keep and others. Such apps could include a 'Review Mode' for existing entries. In this mode, users could be given a…
Elevators and Nosocomial infections
Nosocomial infections are infections that patients contract inside of a hospital, due to contamination or germs present there. A patient undergoing treatment at a hospital is almost always has a weak immune system, which is…
An Idea for Food Delivery Services
How most food ordering/ delivery service apps work is, you make your selection, pay (or CoD), and confirm the order. However, there are occasions (or lack of them) where you might want to order something,…
The Middle Seat
In 2019, the US FAA approved the company Molon Labe Seating's (MLS) landmark seat design for commercial airplanes. What MLS did, is take the problem of discomfort of middle-seat passengers, and attempted to solve…
A Forward: What is Butt Dust?
Image: link I had shared this forward on social media a few years ago, and it popped back up today. Apart from the innocence, simplicity and being purely hilarious, it is a nice example of…
WT f UX
Last week, I was speaking with a post-grad design student who had just finished her Masters, and was trying to figure out her career options. She mentioned that most job opportunities on campus involved UI/UX…
Constraints and the beautiful A-10
Contrary to popular belief: constraints help make better products (or services), and a good innovative product or service does not need to be expensive As a young kid, one thing I was good at, was…
Exploitative Businesses & Divine (and Tech) Interventions
When I wrote 'Design the Future' about Design Thinking, it had a brief overview of the behavioural aspects of innovation - from an innovator's and user's perspective. There was a mention of nudges (not…
Don’t Worry, Nothing’ll Happen
What was missing before and during the 2007-08 global financial meltdown, and during the Covid-19 pandemic? Or during the Spanish Flu? Or in Nazi Germany? Something that perhaps could have prevented the resulting tragedies? …
Life is a Highway
India - More highways or Better National & Public Transport? This is an email I had sent to our Minister for Road Transport & Highways in January this year. Of course I am still…
The Next Educational Diversion from our normal human behaviour
In my book, I briefly discussed the topic of quality in the world of innovation and automation. My view was that through the quality revolution in the US and Japan and then other parts of…
Segway
Not sure y'all heard, but Segway stopped production in 2020. Founded in 2001, those incredible-looking, futuristic two-wheeled, self-balancing personal transporters were priced at a prohibitive $5000-8000 a unit. Probably why, despite their universal popularity and…
The Paradox of Colour Choices
Many of us are familiar with the paradox of choice, whether or not we have heard of the phrase itself. The paradox of choice, is our tendency to believe that more options or variants or…