Ux

The International Airport in Chennai (MAA) is a statement. But before you start assuming its cultural significance, let me quickly say this: I don’t know how to frame the statement itself, but I’ll attempt to elaborate my understanding. As someone interested in UX and wanting to improve UX every here and there – no I haven’t improved UX anywhere yet – I cannot help but notice this about the MAA airport. The departure happens from the new terminal. This building has constructionally stabilized and withstood Vardah, so I guess its a safe place now. And since its a new building, they have incorporated a slightly better queueing system for immigration. Nothing great here and of course, there is a tonne to improve. The arrival happens in the older terminal. The arrival immigration hall is probably half as big as the new terminal itself and yet, it is the most time consuming and unorganized aspect of the entire “arrival” process. Baggage should have taken the spot, but immigration wins hands down. ...

So I got about 60% of one app working on my iPhone to a satisfactory extent. I still need to add a couple of features before it can used as an app. I thought this is perhaps a good time to think about and generally fix the horrible UI that I have created so far. Thinking about it, I suck so bad at UI that I have never written a GUI application all my life. I briefly dabbed with GTK, PyGTK, PyQT, Tk-Wish, WxWidgets and a bunch of others (including VB and VC++). I failed at each one of them. As in the buttons usually clicked and the labels and tables got updated as needed always. But I was never proud of how it looked. I almost hated myself for this failure. But then I stumbled upon websites of many programmers (friends, some times stuff that I just stumble upon) and found that most of them were really bad. And they didn’t seem to have a problem with it. That is when I started feeling very good about myself – at least I could see that my work is not presentable, even if it was worth presenting. ...

I sometimes wonder if I should just enroll and do a certificate course in UX. UX, not UI – my visual sensibilities are a tad retarded, but I am good at spotting failures. And I love research. I may not be the best guy to talk to people yet, but I haven’t tried that first hand as well. So maybe I can learn. I think UX is a very interesting topic. A good understanding of the principles and knowledge of how to apply them to a system/product/solution/problem at hand is an immensely useful skill to have. Of course, I don’t think it will fetch me any salary to start, but maybe I will be good at it. And If I am good, then I think I can get closer to the design field that I believe is the next most important horizontal going forward. ...