I worked in AccionLabs for a year. I worked on a single long project for my whole tenure.
At that time, they used to have offices in Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Bengaluru. And they were supposed to open an office in Pune when I left the company.
I joined AccionLabs as a Senior User Experience Designer. When I started interacting with my senior staff, who were UX Architects or Project Managers, all were over-stuffed with projects out of their capacity. I was working in the Mumbai office, so I don’t know about office culture in other offices. There was a sense of uneasiness everywhere. Employees were allowed to play cricket outside during office hours. One employee never showed up to work but received a salary for the last four months. My project manager and CTO were rude in every meeting. They will discuss some random employees’ performance and why they should warn them to install PIP (Performance Improvement Program) or why they should have been fired. They were a few billable employees who sat ideal doing nothing.
It was such a situation that three or four employees resigned and left the company every two or three days. The company ask them to resign but hosts a send-off party somehow out of no shame. Even two colleagues told in the send-off party’s last speech that they had no work since joining or for the previous four months, and the company asked them to resign, so they did. The churn rate was high.
I have used the Anuroop Wiwaha Matrimony Website for the last four to five years. In addition, I have extensively used their mobile Apple iPhone app and website for my bride search. As a result, I discovered a few points that Anuroop Wiwaha Portal / Company improved upon to help the community get the right matrimony match for their search.
Observations:
Few Points that they can improve on.
Mobile App & Website Portal:
At every event, they talk about having 20,000 Profiles / Accounts of the bride and groom registered on their portal. An average Anuroop Wiwaha account cost is INR 5,000/-.
The user (Bride or Groom) can’t register with a free account as they don’t support free accounts. The user must pay an account fee upfront before registering to the portal. So it gives assurance that the user is at least serious about their search, and even the user has to submit identity proof within seven days of registration. So in a way, it eliminates the possibility of fake accounts or fraud.
Even with this money of 20,000 Accounts * 5,000 Fee, the Bride or Groom Search is cumbersome and hectic. The mobile app is not full fledge as compared to a web portal. They use non-native software technologies for the Apple iPhone app, which takes minutes or sometimes fails to load content and data.
It was the year 2007, A year that I got a job as a Graphic Designer in a good company.
In my previous graduation year, I completed my Final Year Project on Apple Inc.
So I was way more familiar with Apple Computers than I require. So with a new stream of money, I started receiving because of the job I decided to buy my dream computer and that was 24 inch iMac.
Someone from my company told me about Apple Premium Reseller called Unicorn Infosolutions Pvt Ltd which was located at Andheri west near Fun Republic Mall.
The year that I bought iMac was March 2008. I visited their store near Fun Republic Mall. The physical RAM that was coming with iMac was 2GB at that time they told me you have to buy more RAM if you want 4GB RAM. So I said I will opt for 4GB RAM. They told me they can provide me pirated apps preinstalled and Pro Apple Apps like Final Cut Pro, Logic Studio and Adobe Creative Suite. I said I am not interested. But this was the moment I sensed something wrong going on with the purchasing process.
Unicorn person told me they will not deliver Apple iMac to the home I have to carry to my home which was 20 kilometres away. I said no problem I will carry it myself.
I think after using that iMac I started experiencing issues and I started feeling I was cheated by Apple Premium Reseller while I purchased supposed to be a new iMac from them.
I was planning to write this blog post for the last many years. I was facing this issue since I had my first Microsoft Windows Operating System-based computer in the year 2002. And after that, it got solved partially on Mac in the year 2008. And I faced the issue of Marathi on the web when I had my website mandarapte.com in the year 2010 and then my community Marathi website chitpavankatta.com in the year 2012.
The idea of writing this blog post or writing documentation about why we face the problem of typing Marathi / Sanskrit / Hindi with Devanagari Script on a computer got more important when some category of journalists or people who started false propaganda to tell the Marathi population at large that Devanagari Script for the Marathi language is no more relevant anymore rather we should abandon Devanagari Script Alphabets and start using Latin Script to write the Marathi Language. An example given by these people was that of the young generation who are writing or chatting or texting on their mobile phone using Facebook, Twitter or Instagram that they use Latin script to write Marathi than using Devanagari Script.
At that time I attended a few lectures on Devanagari Calligraphy and Typography where I met an important person like Mr Mukund Gokhale from Pune who had done extensive work in building Marathi Typewriter with his two-three seniors in his field. He also worked with popular calligraphers, and typographers to bring Devanagari onto the computer i.e. designing popular Devanagari fonts to be used on Computers. At that time I was working at IITB as a web designer. After that, I met Mukund Gokhale at his Pune home to discuss why Marathi Typing is so difficult and why it is targeted by anti-nationals who have no linguistic background to speak about abandoning the Devanagari script itself. We discuss it at length he even showed me software that he has developed with his developer tech support to design Marathi-based digital artworks and designs. It was his initiative to create an alternative solution to Adobe Photoshop / Adobe Illustrator which doesn’t support Devanagari Script in the year 2014/17. And now it’s the year 2021. Because of these long conversations on phone or personally meeting each other and I even developed the Devanagari Learning app for iPhone, iPad and Mac.
When this propaganda was started by abusing the Marathi language and falsely showcasing its irrelevance in today’s world. I talked with popular Hindu Orators who were tirelessly working to stop this propaganda. So people like me were middlemen between people like popular Hindu orators and calligrapher/typographer Mukund Gokhale to share knowledge and know-how between them and connect the dots.
So I am going to write here my observation that I got to learn while talking with Mukund Gokhale and some observations are of my capacity as I am myself a designer and developer too who want to talk and design/develop in Marathi.
I was working with one of my old employers. They hired a person to lead or head the design team in their organisation. And I suddenly started facing odd, arrogant and erratic behaviour from the newly hired design head.
I completed one massive project which lasted me designing for more than 7/8 months then there was no work for any designer in the Mumbai location. So I and another designer were hoping new projects may be in pipeline and will be assigned to us. But a new design head started telling me or complaining about my efficiency and commitment. He even questioned my ability to being UX Designer…
When I eat Bhel Puri for 35/- rupee at Hotel ‘A’ but I order the same Bhel Puri from same hotel ‘A’ through Swiggy is shown as 50/- rupee at MRP price.
Why these discrepancies? Even I saw Swiggy’s user base repeatedly asking them the same question on Twitter.
Today I used Adobe XD for whole day. Felt it’s really competitive to Sketch app on Mac.
I really avoided using Adobe XD all this years because of Adobe Subscription TAX which normally cost me INR 5,000/- here in India. But loved Sketch App’s payment model which is almost INR 5,000/ for year then you can renew subscription or use it without update as long as you want.
But loved Adobe XD compatibility and integration with Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop, it is real smooth and well done. Adobe XD’s prototype tool is smooth.
Best advice I ever received about designing logos and symbols is use humanistic elements / curves / lines in your design and totally avoid mechanical drawings. As mechanical drawings can be taken care by computer itself.
This advice was given to me by Shirbhavikar sir and Pawar sir when I was doing BFA Applied Arts at Sir J. J. Institute of Applied Art.
It seems I don’t follow this advice totally in my drawings / designs and illustrations. Even after 4 years of my graduation when I met Mahendra Patel sir at his SID office he told me the same.
