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.
I got a job as a Graphic Designer in a good company in 2007.
I completed my Final Year Project on Apple Inc. in my previous graduation year.
So, I was way more familiar with Apple Computers than I required. With a new stream of money, I started receiving money because of the job. I bought my dream computer, a 24-inch iMac.
Someone from my company told me about Apple Premium Reseller, Unicorn Infosolutions Pvt Ltd, 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 the iMac was 2GB. At that time, they told me I must buy more RAM if I wanted 4GB RAM. So I said I will opt for 4GB RAM. They told me they could provide me with pirated apps that were preinstalled and Pro Apple Apps like Final Cut Pro, Logic Studio, and Adobe Creative Suite. I said I was not interested. But this was when I sensed something wrong with the purchasing process.
The Unicorn person told me they would not deliver the Apple iMac to the home I had to carry to my house, which was 20 kilometres away. I said no problem, I will take it myself.
After using that iMac, I started experiencing issues and feeling cheated by Apple Premium Reseller when I purchased what was supposed to be a new iMac from them.
I have been planning to write this blog post for many years. I have been facing this issue since I had my first Microsoft Windows Operating System-based computer in 2002. After that, it was partially solved on a Mac in 2008. I faced the issue of Marathi on the web when I had my website mandarapte.com in 2010 and then my community Marathi website chitpavankatta.com in 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 critical 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 instead we should abandon Devanagari Script Alphabets and start using Latin Script to write the Marathi Language. These people gave an example of the young generation who are writing, chatting, or texting on their mobile phones using Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. They use Latin script to write Marathi rather than 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 or three seniors in his field. He also worked with famous calligraphers and typographers to bring Devanagari onto the computer, i.e. designing popular Devanagari fonts for 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 tricky and why it is targeted by anti-nationals with no linguistic background to speak about abandoning the Devanagari script. We discussed it at length. He even showed me software he 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 / Illustrator that doesn’t support Devanagari Script in 2014/17. And now it’s the year 2021. Because of these long conversations on the phone or when we met each other personally, I even developed the Devanagari Learning app for iPhone, iPad and Mac.
When this propaganda 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 it. People like me were middlemen between famous Hindu orators and calligrapher/typographer Mukund Gokhale to share knowledge and know-how and connect the dots.
So, I am going to write here my observations that I learned while talking with Mukund Gokhale. Some observations are in my capacity as I am myself a designer and developer who wants 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, and 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 be a UX Designer…
When I eat Bhel Puri for 35/—rupee at Hotel ‘A’, but I order the same Bhel Puri from the same hotel ‘A’ through Swiggy, it is shown as 50/—rupee at the MRP price.
Why these discrepancies? I even saw Swiggy’s user base repeatedly asking them the same question on Twitter.
Today, I used Adobe XD for the whole day. I felt it was competitive to use the Sketch app on Mac.
I have avoided using Adobe XD all these years because Adobe Subscription Tax usually costs me INR 5,000/—here in India. But I loved Sketch App’s payment model, which is almost INR 5,000/year. Then, you can renew your subscription or use it without updates as long as you want.
I loved Adobe XD’s compatibility and integration with Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. It is really smooth and well done. Adobe XD’s prototype tool is smooth.
The best advice I ever received about designing logos and symbols is to use humanistic elements/curves/lines and avoid mechanical drawings. The computer can handle mechanical drawings.
This advice was given to me by Shirbhavikar sir and Pawar sir when I was doing my BFA in Applied Arts at Sir J. J. Institute of Applied Art.
It seems I don’t totally follow this advice in my drawings/designs and illustrations. Even after four years of graduation, when I met Mahendra Patel sir at his SID office, he told me the same.
I had been planning for a long time but never implemented Google Analytics for my Apple iOS Apps to get accurate data about my app usage. I thought it was more work to implement analytics in the app with a framework using cocoa-pods, which would, in a way, slow down my app performance.
But with the news that Apple is taking privacy and data collection seriously, with online ads for Safari Browser on Mac and system-wide privacy settings on Apple iOS 14 for iPhone, I am happy that I never implemented a third-party analytics framework or added an ad network to generate revenue from my apps. My apps are already paid, and I don’t want to mess up user experience with impromptu in-app advertisements.
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