Blog

My Heart is in The Work- Keynote by Jon Kolko

Do you know what type of behaviour you or your company want to provoke? And is that aligned with how people actually want to live their lives? Empathy is the key to understanding and changing behavior.
The most popular stuff from 2012 at ConeTrees

I wish you, my dear readers, a wonderful 2013. Here is what I wrote about and posted in 2012 which was the most popular with you all.
The Asian Banker Excellence in Retail Financial Services Awards 2013- Best Internet Banking Initiative- Consumer Banking: Standard Chartered Bank, Singapore

The Asian banker runs the most prestigious awards programme in the industry covering the full spectrum of topics and areas that constitute the financial services. At Possible, I led the global revamp of Standard Chartered’s global websites as the UX lead- planning, coordinating and executing user research and information architecture, content strategy and interaction design…
RIP Bill Boddgride of IDEO (1943-2012)

I am saddened to say that Bill Moggridge, co-founder of IDEO, designer of the first laptop, author of the book ‘Designing Interactions‘, important role player in promoting the human-centered approach in design passed away last month on September 8, 2012. May his soul rest in peace.
Runne(a)r phones- if you run, you need one (earphone mounted rotary knob volume control)

SummaryThis is a product idea I have submitted on Quirky targeted at runners.Changing the music volume (because of traffic, changing environmental noise) while running is always a hassle. Well, not any more, Runne(a)rphone’s here.Vote here: http://www.quirky.com/ideations/224692 (if you like it, and tell your friends about it too) The Problem This product is a solution to…
Karen McGrane on Adapting Ourselves to Adaptive Content

This is a fantastic presentation on NPR’s COPE concept- create once, publish everywhere. Karen asks the right questions- why are we still letting content authors plan for where their content will live on a web page? Why do we waste time and money creating and recreating content instead of planning for content reuse? As our…
The best of Cone Trees for 2011

2011 has ended and has been a rather good year for me. I know I have not been writing this year, but work has kept me very occupied, and happy. I left Delhi and moved to Singapore early in the year to join PebbleRoad and have since then had a great time working on a…
Rajat Paharia on Influencing User Behaviour through Game Dynamics

Rajat talks about how designers can address fundamental human needs and desires (like status, achievement, reward, competition, self-expression) to make experiences both compelling and satisfying. He talks about how game designers have known for years on how to incentivise and motivate players by addressing these needs through the use of mechanics like points, levels, leaderboards,…
A Quick Look into IDEO’s Design Process- Designing a Shopping Cart in 5 days

In 1998, ABC’s Nightline news show asked IDEO to create a new shopping cart concept, considering issues such as maneuverability, shopping behavior, child safety, and maintenance cost. The resulting episode demonstrates IDEO’s design process, showing the multidisciplinary team brainstorming, researching, prototyping, and gathering user feedback on a design in order to move all the way…
Alexis Lloyd on New Interactions With News

Alexis talks about some of the notable paradigm shifts that are happening around technology and media and how these affect the user experience; like the web shifting from a paradigm of publishing to communicating, and from people finding content to content finding people. She discusses the implications of these changes in technology and consumer behavior…