Community / Article 10. (Republished from CAUE 2008 Proceedings) Dec. 2008, HCI Vistas Vol-IV Author: Dr. Dinesh Katre Conference on Advances in Usability Engineering (CAUE) 2008 Transition from informal gatherings to a formal conference Usability practitioners in Pune have witnessed World Usability Day seminars during 2006 and 2007. Learning from the experience of both these events, the need was felt to elevate its standard by adopting to a typical conference ...

Indian Scenario / Article 8. Sept 2008, HCI Vistas Vol-IV Author: Dr. Dinesh Katre How best can mobile technology support social causes? USID Foundation must be thanked and applauded for selecting such thought provoking topic for the panel discussion during the conference at Bangalore. Through this brief article, I share with you the information gathered during my study for this panel discussion. I also wish to share my insights ...

User Behavior / Article 9. First Published in Oct. 2006, HCI Vistas Vol-II Author: Saumitri Choudhuri This is a very important phase in the world of User Interface (UI) design. More and more software product companies have begun to realize that they no longer have the luxury of designing just a functional differentiator and remaining ahead of their competitors, since almost all competitors today have similar products. This simple ...

Usability Evaluation / Article 12. First Published in March 2006, HCI Vistas Vol-I Author: Dr. Dinesh Katre Introduction This article presents a survey of eight randomly selected web portals setup by Indian state governments. Though my main objective is to evaluate the usability of web portals from the perspective of citizens living in a particular state, when I began the usability evaluation, I realized that most of these web ...

Usability Evaluation / Article 3. First Published in July 2005, HCI Vistas Vol-I Author: Dr. Dinesh Katre Anthropological Lineage: The readers might feel that what has this topic to do with Human Computer Interface (HCI). As I always have HCI as my regular standpoint. One has to consider the evolution of Indian society, while evaluating the design sensitivity of average Indian citizens. Of course the resultant analysis will benefit ...

Indian Scenario / Article 5. First published in March 2007 Author: Dr. Dinesh Katre At the outset of this deliberation on Indian e-Governance initiative, it is necessary to emphasize that our intentions are constructive and very positive. The idea is to identify opportunities for further improvement; the objective is to see how common citizens be benefited through this effort; and maximize the Returns On Investment (ROI). 1. The Missing ...

Indian Scenario / Article 4. First published in July 2005, HCI Vistas Vol-I Author: Dr. Dinesh Katre This article is already published in the Special Issue of Sampada on Education by Mahratta Chamber of Commerce, Industries & Agriculture, July 2005, pp27-29. 1. Market Potential in India The multimedia industry in India has flourished by leaps and bounds in the last decade or so. Its primary segments can be further divided ...

Indian Scenario / Article 11. First published in Nov. 2006, HCI Vistas Vol-II Author: Dr. Dinesh Katre Big Picture Indian software exports and services has already reaped $ 23.6 billion and is expected to touch the total of between $ 29 and $ 31 billion by March 31, 2007 as reported by InfoWorld. The domestic market for software and services is also projected to grow by 20% on account of e-governance projects ...

Indian Scenario / Article 2. First published in June 2005, HCI Vistas Vol-I Author: Dr. Dinesh Katre Is HCI in India really catching up? To me the answer is probably yes and no both but certainly it is catching up more like the astrology profession. This comment is based on the observation that many interface designers are unable to decompose the usability problems in a logical way and with ...

Indian Scenario / Article 1. First published in May 2005, HCI Vistas Vol-I Author: Dr. Dinesh Katre The Elephant Called HCI The popular metaphor of 'the elephant being perceived by many blind persons' is very well applicable to Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) domain. But in case of HCI the problems are multi-sensory, multi-disciplinary and multi-dimensional. Hence, in this case, one can visualize a slightly modified version of this metaphor with ...