Make me think!

Make me think!

Hardik Gandhi   January 30, 2018

the design of complexity

Until recently everyday objects were shaped by their technology. The design of a telephone was basically a hull around a machine. The task of the designers was to make technology look pretty.

It was up to the engineers to define the interfaces of those objects. Their main concern was the function of the machine, not its ease of use. We — the “users” — had to figure out how they worked.

With every technological innovation our everyday objects became richer and increasingly complex. Designers and engineers simply burdened the users with this increase in complexity. I am still having nightmares trying to get a train ticket from the old BART vending machines in San Francisco.

From complicated to simple

Fortunately, UX (User eXperience) designers have found ways to design beautiful interfaces that are easy to use. Their process can resemble a philosophical enquiry, where they constantly asks questions such as: What is this really about? How do we perceive this? What is our mental model?

Today, as a result of their efforts, we interact with wonderfully designed interfaces. Designers have been taming complexity for us. They make extremely sophisticated technology appear simple and easy to use.

From simple to too simple

And easy sells well. Thus more and more products are based on the promise to make our lives easier by using increasingly complex technologies with ever simpler interfaces.

Just tell your phone what you want and things will appear magically — whether it is the information on a screen or a package delivered to your doorstep. A gigantic amount of technologies and infrastructure is domesticated by brave designers and engineers who make all this work.

But we don’t see — let alone understand — what is going on behind the scenes, behind the simple appearance. We are kept in the dark.

You should see me whining like a spoiled brat when a video call is not working as smoothly as expected — all those interruptions and the bad sound quality! An experience which would have appeared nothing short of a miracle to people just 50 years ago and which requires the operation of a colossal infrastructure has become an expected normality for me.

We fail to appreciate and to empathise because we don’t understand what is going on.

So does technology makes us dumb? This question isn’t really new. Famously Plato warned us about the detrimental effects of writing — which we know of because he wrote them down.

The problem with “user centered” design

In his excellent book “Living with complexity” Donald Norman offers numerous strategies for how designers can harness the design of complexity to improve the user experience.

And there lies a problem.

I am increasingly wary of the term “user centered design”. The word “user” has a second meaning — “consumer of drugs”— which implies dependance, short-sighted gratification and a reliable source of income for the “dealer”. The word “centered” excludes pretty much everyone and everything else.

A holistic approach to complexity

As an alternative we should widen our perspective and ask questions such as:

Empowerment: Who’s having the fun?

Maybe being able to speak a foreign language is more fun than using a translation software.

Whenever we are about to substitute a laborious activity such as learning a language, cooking a meal, or tending to plants with a — deceptively — simple solution, we might always ask ourselves: Should the technology grow — or the person using it?

Resilience: Does it make us more vulnerable?

Highly sophisticated systems work flawlessly, as long as things go as expected.

When a problem occurs which hasn’t been anticipated by the designers, those systems are prone to fail. The more complex the systems are, the higher are the chances that things go wrong. They are less resilient.

A chronic dependance on a combination of electronics, artificial intelligence and a high speed internet connection for the simplest tasks is a recipe for disaster. It makes our lives more complicated, especially when we don’t understand what is going on behind the deceptively simple interface.

Empathy: What is the impact of simplification on others?

Our decisions have consequences for ourselves and others. A simplified appearance can make us blind to those consequences.

Our decision what smart phone to buy or what to have for dinner has a huge impact on other living beings. Knowing about the complexity behind such a decision can be of tremendous value. We need to know things better if we want to be better.

Embracing complexity

Simplification is a powerful design strategy. Naturally the button to make an emergency call should be as simple as possible. And yet, we also need further design strategies that help us accept, understand, and interact with complex situations in our lives.

What are the main parts of the computer?

What are the main parts of the computer?

Hardik Gandhi   January 29, 2018

Introduction

A computer is an electronic device with many attachments. These attachments are either necessary or enhance a computer's performance. These are mainly external components of computers. These parts you can see and touch while sitting at a personal computer. They fall under the category called Hardware. In order to start learning about how to use computers, you will need to be able to identify the main parts that make up a computer. In this lesson, we’ll cover the basics of computer hardware.

What are these parts on my desk?

Some of the following components may be similar to what you have seen while seated at a personal computer.

Mouse

Used for making selections. There are two buttons on a mouse. Most actions are performed using the left mouse button. Some mice have cords and some do not.

Keyboard

Used for entering data, generating commands. The keyboard layout is similar to a typewriter with additional keys for other functions. There is a number keypad to the right of the main alphabetical keypad.

Monitor

The monitor is the visual component of the computer. It displays information to the user. This is a required part of the computer. This part requires electricity so it will have its own power cord to plug into an outlet.

Speakers

The speakers are the audio component of the computer.

Computer System Unit

This is where everything comes together to work. The system box holds the central processing unit to act as the brains of the computer. The unit contains the motherboard which is the main circuitry for the system. The power supply for the main computer is located in the unit. All the other parts including the monitor, mouse, keyboard, speakers, and others join at the unit to become a functional system.

Printer

The printer is used to develop a hard copy or paper copy of a document or picture. The printer connects to the computer and requires the use of its own power cord.

Compact Disk (CD)

This device is used for storage. Some CDs hold information to be loaded into a computer. Some are used to hold information from the computer. It depends on what type of CD it is.

Thumb Drive

The thumb drive is a portable storage device. You use it store information from a computer and use it on another system. They are also known as flash drives.

Security Surveillance Cameras

Security Surveillance Cameras

Hardik Gandhi   January 29, 2018

Product Description:

Supported by a team of expert professionals, we are capable of offering high quality services for Security Surveillance Cameras. Depending upon the IP standards, these network cameras can be connected to any kind of IP network and provide features like viewing and recording of any place in the world remotely. Moreover, these cameras are appreciated for providing advanced video analytics characteristics such as motion detection, audio detection and tampering alarm. Offered at most competitive prices, our portfolio includes professionals IP video surveillance and network cameras with mega pixel / HDTV resolutions. Extensively used to secure the safety of people and places, or to remotely monitor property and facilities, our range of CCTV cameras can be installed anywhere for crime prevention and detection. Easy to install, our technologically advanced our range includes:

• Indoor Camera
• Outdoor Camera
• IR Day/Night Camera
• Dome Camera
• Bullet Camera
• Vandal Proof Camera
• Hidden Camera
• Pan Tilt Zoom (PTZ) Camera
• Wall cameras
• Box Cameras
• Spy Cameras

Why HubSpot’s Building a Centralized Platform

Why HubSpot’s Building a Centralized Platform

Hardik Gandhi   January 29, 2018

In one year, HubSpot doubled the number of certified partners in its platform ecosystem and increased the number of apps installed by customers by 142% — here’s why that matters.

We’re living in the golden age of marketing and sales technology. There are more than 5,000 marketing and sales technology vendors globally, all striving to help businesses to better find and delight customers in a digital world.

As a result, there’s no lack of cool and exciting software in this space. If you can imagine just about any creative new capability you’d like for engaging with your customers, there’s probably a martech startup out there somewhere building it.

The challenge, however, is figuring out how to get all these different tools to work well together — without needing a crack team of IT engineers to take months wiring them up. As Dr. McCoy from Star Trek might have protested, “Damn it, Jim, I’m a marketer, not a systems architect.”

This is the challenge that a centralized platform can solve.

What exactly makes a SaaS solution a “platform” instead of simply being a product?

Almost every SaaS product today has APIs that let it exchange data with other applications. A platform, however, plays a more active role in coordinating how multiple products work together. You can picture a platform as a hub, with spokes connecting other products to its center. The hub binds those disparate products together and orchestrates them in a common mission.

A platform creates a stable center of gravity in your marketing and sales stack by delivering three main benefits through a centralized:

1. Data Model. A platform does more than just exchange data with other apps in your stack. It establishes an organizing model for that data — for instance, a common identity and record structure for a lead, a customer, a deal, etc. It maps data from all the other apps connected to it into those common record formats, enforcing a baseline level of data quality. That centralized and well-structured database then serves as a shared “source of truth” for the platform and any other app that wants to tap into it.

2.Workflow and User Experience. Research has found that marketers and salespeople can lose a lot of time switching between different applications. A platform reduces that overhead by establishing a centralized “home base” where most users can do the majority of their work. In addition to providing a common view of shared data across apps, it also becomes the center of their workflow for most activities — especially if apps embed key features directly into platform’s user interface. Individual users might still log into other apps for more specialized tasks, but there’s much less day-to-day app switching across your organization.

3.Certification Authority. When you integrate apps on your own, you must take full responsibility for making sure that everything plays well together. A platform lifts some of that burden off your shoulders by establishing a trusted certification process for apps in its ecosystem. Certified apps will integrate smoothly, and you’re assured that they’ve been reviewed for a certain level of compatibility. A helpful directory of all certified apps maintained by the platform company can also make it easier to find the right app to add whenever a particular need arises.

All of these factors help lower the organizational costs of adopting multiple products in your marketing and sales stack, by reducing friction in their selection, installation, and use.

The Growth Dynamics of Platform Ecosystems

To get a sense of how well a platform is doing at delivering those benefits, you can look at two key indicators of ecosystem health through growth of:

1.The number of apps installed by customers. If more platform customers are installing more certified apps, that’s one of the strongest signals that there’s real value in the ecosystem for them. If installing or using apps is difficult — or ultimately doesn’t achieve results — this metric stalls.

2.The number of certified apps. Quality matters more than quantity when it comes to a platform ecosystem. An app directory filled with a bunch of low-quality apps creates more confusion than clarity. But if the number of high-quality certified apps is growing, it’s a good sign that the platform dynamics are working for app developers too. A platform that makes it easier for businesses to successfully adopt more apps naturally attracts more developers.

By both of these measures, the HubSpot platform had a good year in 2017.

The number of apps installed by HubSpot customers on our platform increased 142%, and the number of certified apps in our Connect partner ecosystem grew by 108%.

The graphic at the top of this post illustrates what our platform ecosystem looks like here at the start of 2018. You can also browse our updated integrations directory to learn more about all the different capabilities these app developers have to offer. We’re anticipating further expansion in the year ahead.

While we still have much work to do — we aspire to build a truly lovable platform, and we hold that as a very high bar — we’re excited about the growing momentum in our ecosystem. But most of all, we’re delighted to see our customers getting measurable benefits from our platform by effectively integrating more specialized capabilities into their marketing and sales stacks.

That’s what really matters.

Great technology. Shit service. That’s our reputation.

Great technology. Shit service. That’s our reputation.

Hardik Gandhi   January 29, 2018

In one of my earliest roles at a B2B startup, there were so many fires in a day, that if no “emergencies” occurred for even a couple of hours, I sensed something was wrong immediately. It got to the point where I knew hundreds of clients by name because of how frequently I needed to do damage control.

Meanwhile, new products, new features, new services, were continuously released as we aimed to stay on the ‘cutting edge’ of technology. With limited resources and a mission to stay innovative, low impact bugs and minority clients were deemed low priority. I watched clients cancel and support staff burn out.

Internally, the “importance of customer service excellence” was reiterated time and time again through every possible means — email, chat, message boards, meetings, handbooks, training workshops, etc. Pull aside any employee at random and they could mindlessly regurgitate that it was one of the company core values. In reality, we missed the mark by a long shot.

“Great technology. Shit service. That’s our reputation.”

if this got a chuckle out of you, then you probably know what I’m talking about

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Where was the disconnect? The answer isn’t black and white, but I saw two areas contributing the most to this issue.

1. Not all clients were treated equal. With the mentality of move fast and break things, beta users or clients who contributed to advancing the product/software were implicitly given priority. This is not necessarily a bad thing if there was load balancing to ensure sufficient support for the majority of the client base — paying customers with expectations.
2. Innovation was prioritized over maintenance. Yes, complacency is dangerous and it is important to grow, to scale. But at what expense? With stretched resources, it can be easy to neglect seemingly ‘low impact’ bugs and glitches. The result? A team of support staff unequipped to provide long-term solutions to recurring issues for clients that reach out again, and again, and again.

Let’s break this down.

When a startup makes the transition from early stage (looking for market validation), into a growth stage, there is no longer the luxury of only dealing with ‘Innovators’ and ‘Early Adopters.’

This. Is. Not. A. Bad. Thing.

Great technology that is lucky enough to have reached ‘product market fit’ serves a need, fills a gap, or solves a problem. Here’s the thing. Clients onboarding at this point — the ‘Early Majority’ — have an inherent expectation that they can reliably use the product. There is a lower tolerance for inconsistency, errors, glitches.

Most, if not all, are not willing guinea pigs supporting your grander, ultimate vision. They do not care about that. They did not sign up for that. They want the tool they paid for to work. They want it to work, the way it’s designed to, when it’s supposed to, so they can go about their day running their own businesses.

What am I saying?

The crux of it is this. There comes a point when innovation can wait. The point where the difference between success and failure is execution. Not the idea. Not intelligence. Consistent execution.

I get the sense that many startups thrive on the concept of organized chaos and inherently reject structure. Perhaps it’s a cultural thing. Perhaps some startups remain functional on this model. However, organized chaos is still chaos. And I, for one, can not imagine operational efficiency being optimal on a model of chaos.

There comes a time for structure, which does not have to equal rigidity. But it needs to create stability. While this will mean something different for every company, there are some general things. I’m talking about standard operating procedures. Enforcing internal processes (e.g. clients are not QA, production environments are not meant for testing… test the code!). And please, documentation can no longer be optional.

Stability is just as important as scalability. Hate to say it, but scaling on an unstable foundation is stupidity. Especially when hubris allows a company to believe they can get away with it.

The company I referred to at the start of the article was a SaaS startup utilizing a subscription model. While it was vital to retain all our customers, the cost of switching platforms was often too high and there weren’t comparable programs on the market. As a result, the team calibrated to the errors and took our clients’ tolerance for granted.

There is nothing more detrimental to a business than falling into the trap of believing their technology is great enough to outweigh good service.

The User Experience of Lootboxes

The User Experience of Lootboxes

Hardik Gandhi   January 28, 2018

I hope you like GIF’s. I brought GIF’s.

Disclaimer: In real life, when I’m not pretending I know how to write, I work for a gambling company here in Australia. This means that lootboxes — gambling — in video games is a unique point of interest for me. I’m not a gambler in any sense, but I deal with the industry on a daily basis. I think this gives me a unique perspective on the topic, and I want to be up front about where I’m coming from when I talk about it.

I believe gambling is much like drinking or smoking — it’s harmful to millions of people, and requires a significant effort by both gambling corporations and governments to regulate the medium effectively. I also, however, believe that just like drinking and smoking, it is an adults choice to participate in any form of gambling.

In gaming, gambling takes a different tone. There are very, very few barriers in most games for minors to participate in lootboxes, which absolutely are gambling. I believe there is an inherent ethical responsibility on any developer or publisher to put safeguards in place to protect kids. I also believe that it is the governments responsibility to enforce strict regulations on developers on how, and when, they institute gambling systems in games.

The views expressed in this article do not reflect the views of Tabcorp in any way. These are my own personal opinions.

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I hope you like GIF’s. This article has a few.

Lootboxes were the number one gaming story of 2017. More specifically, games like Star Wars Battlefront 2 — a relatively good game in it’s own right that was significantly hampered by it’s extremely heavy-handed micro-transaction system.

I don’t want to dwell on the ethics or merits of these systems (I’ve done that enough in the disclaimer), but what I do want to talk about is how — from a UX perspective — these systems work and affect players.

I will say, however, that I unequivocally do not support games that put gameplay upgrades (especially those that grant power in a competitive setting) behind a paywall — commonly referred to as pay-to-win. I’m talking about games like FIFA Ultimate Team, Star Wars Battlefront 2, and to a lesser extent, Fortnite. Players shouldn’t have to pay money to have a better experience than other players.

There’s some key techniques successful lootboxes use to create an exciting opening experience — let’s see what they are:

Artificial Scarcity

Rarity is a massive driver in games. As soon as something is rare, it becomes intrinsically valuable to a player. This makes sense in the real world — there’s not much gold, so that which exists has value. In the digital world, everything is only as rare as a developer makes it.

Lootboxes often use thematic visual changes to represent time gates on certain boxes. Card packs or crates that are only available for certain periods have a unique style, so you feel as though you need to get it now, or you’ll miss out. This combines a sense of urgency and rarity — something that can powerfully influence a players’ decision to purchase.

Hearthstone’s extra touch — mousing over an unrevealed card gives you a glimpse of it’s rarity.

‘The Old Gods’ expansion features Lovecraftian-style packs.

Hearthstone is a good example of this. Each new expansion has it’s own card-pack style. It makes them feel special, and also gives that message that they’re new, or limited.

‘Knights of the Frozen Throne’ took a frostier route.

Hearthstone doesn’t remove these card packs for purchase, so there is technically no urgency (other than the need to have the best cards to stay competitive, of course), but the visual styling still motivates purchases.

EA Sports FIFA series actually does this a bit better. Their Ultimate Team mode has card packs that players can purchase (more on that later) that award football players for your teams.

This is an extreme example, but many players will genuinely have 6–8 versions in the game, most of which are time-sensitive rewards.

EA releases new, upgraded versions of players every week, alongside with regular events throughout the season. If you don’t buy packs that week/event, you can’t get that version of the player.

It’s very, very effective when your favourite player has a special edition card that you want. I may or may not have been brainwashed by this trick. More than once. Like, a lot, actually.

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The Drumroll

Early lootboxes were simple — purchase me and get some loot. A few years ago, though, things got a little complex. Lootboxes started opening with some fancy graphics and cool effects. A big shift was what I call the drumroll. It’s that moment between clicking ‘Open’ and finding out what you’ve got, where often the box will reveal something about your rewards.

I’ve opened hundreds of these, but only just noticed that the box has disappeared when the camera comes back down…

This Overwatch box is a great example. There’s a moment where the rewards are spinning through the air and you catch a glimpse of the rarity of what you’re getting. When you see the orange glow of a legendary skin, it’s exciting and builds anticipation. Likewise, if you open 20 boxes and don’t get to see that orange hue, there’s tangible disappointment.

FIFA does this well, also. When you open a pack, the animation changes depending on the best player you recieve. Take a look at the three animations below:

A pack with a gold-ranked, non-rare player.

A pack with a gold-ranked, rare player.

A pack with a gold-ranked, rare, high-rated player.

The first two are relatively subtle, but even from the first moment of opening there’s some additional gold effects and a slightly different split effect for the rare opening.

The third opening is referred to as a ‘Walkout’ in the community — it’s reserved for highly rated players, and the player animation is personalised to one that player is known for in real life. When the billboards pop out of the pack, you immediately know you’re up for a good player. If that player jumps on screen, you’ve got one of the best in the game.

The excitement in these effects don’t start at the reveal, however. The excitement builds from the moment the pack starts to split and you recognise the unique effect that tells the player they’re in for something good.

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The Big Reveal

As you might expect, the grand reveal is the most important part of any lootbox. This is where the player experiences limitless euphoria or bitter disappointment.

Ironically, there’s not too much to say about this. The boxes we’ve looked at so far are great examples of fun reveal moments; Hearthstone’s slow card-turn, FIFA’s staggered reveal of country, then position, then team, and finally the player’s name and portrait.

So, to change things up, let’s look at a few that I think are bad at this:

The infamous lootbox of Star Wars Battlefront 2

Star Wars Battlefront 2 drew so much ire in 2017 for offering powerful player upgrades in their lootboxes. They got slammed for this choice and, in turn, made some changes. It didn’t mean much though. What’s staggering is that despite this huge focus on a microtransaction model, the animation sucks. The holographic reveal has no impact, the color codes aren’t vibrant or exciting, and most packs came with intangible junk anyway. Boring.

I don’t remember this scene from Saving Private Ryan.

Call of Duty WWII had you call in ‘Supply Drops’ in a player populated hubspace between matches. This was a pretty transparent mechanism to show players who weren’t buying boxes just how much fun everyone else was having with their loot. The card flip lacks impact for me, and there’s no real drumroll beyond waiting for the cards to turn. Not great.

No Llamas were harmed in the making of Fortnite. Or so I’m told.

Aesthetically, I actually really like Fortnite’s loot-llamas. It’s also a relatively generous loot model, although it loses any possible browny points by having tangible upgrades locked behind purchasable lootboxes. Overall, it’s a creative execution that lacks any punch. The loot slows down the rarer it is, which actually feels more tedious than it does exciting.

That’s a big box for a little gun, Sergeant.

Battlefield 1’s crates are a prerendered animation followed by a static image of the weapon skin you get. It’s kind of cool the first two or three times, but once that delight wears off it feels more like an afterthought. Snore.

The Power of Choice

Something that’s come up relatively recently is giving players choices in their loot. There isn’t too many examples of this, but I did want to showcase a few games that use this technique. I think it’s a fun, pro-player way to create additional engagement in these sort of random drop systems.

Using the card backs to display rarity and type is a nice twist on a drumroll mechanic.

When you get a ‘Keg’ in Gwent, the fifth card in the pack is one you choose from a set of three. This is a great way to solve an ongoing problem with TCG games, where players rarely have the ability to purchase specific cards ad-hoc.

In Fortnite, at a certain tier of loot, the rarest item in a lootbox will be given to the player as a choice of two equally rare items. This is often between two weapon types, or two new heroes. It’s a nice way to make the loot more meaningful to the player, as they can choose something relevant to them.

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In closing, I’d just like to say that lootboxes, for the most part, are completely evil.

I actually really like microtransactions as a concept. I think it’s a good way for developers to generate ongoing revenue and can be done in a way that doesn’t negatively impact the game, or the playerbase.

I also acknowledge that this concept has existed pretty much since Magic: The Gathering got big. Trading Card Games are almost exclusively built around a random-pack model (although the ability to trade cards mitigates this by creating a secondary market).

Furthermore, I admit that lootboxes when done right can be really fun. I quite like Overwatch’s interpretation — you earn them through standard gameplay, they only contain cosmetics, and you are rarely encouraged to make a purchase. There’s even a recovery mechanic in place so that you can outright purchase items you haven’t been lucky enough to recieve (Although this could be better).

But lootboxes, like booster packs, are gambling. They just are. And it’s a shame that such a large part of the industry (Including our two biggest publishers, EA and Activision Blizzard) are not so deeply entrenched in these systems as a way to sustain their games.

If you’re going to do lootboxes, please, fill them only with cosmetics. Having upgrades that affect gameplay in a randomised system compromises the integrity of your game, and forces players to choose between investing or being at a disadvantage.

There’s a right way and a wrong way to make systems like these work. There’s also a fun way. I don’t think lootboxes are going anywhere, but hopefully they’re going to get better.

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