Company

Betting your company on Metaverse AR/VR Craze

Mandar Apte Apple, Apple iOS, Apple iPadOS, Apple macOS, Apple watchOS, Apps, Art & Design, Company, Personal Experience, Reviews, User Experience Design Leave a comment

First Story that I want to share today is from past experience

The year was 2009 I was working as an Animator and E-Learning Courseware Creator and Designer. And I was planning to switch the design domain to HCI/UX i.e. Human-Computer Interaction/User Experience Design.

And software like Apple Shake and Adobe After Effects was a common competitive tool that was used in both domains.

I was using an iMac at that time. Adobe After Effects was bundled in Creative Suite at that time, costing around INR 45,000/- in India. Apple Shake was way cheaper as it was a standalone offering from Apple.

It was the day of 30th July 2009 that I was going to start to learn the Apple Shake as Apple offered all tutorials on their website for free. And it was the same day that Apple discontinued Apple Shake. When I woke up early in the morning to start to learn I saw the news on their portal. I was devastated by the news. But I was relieved as I saved my time as if I started learning it two months ago and then they discontinued it then it was the waste of time and energy. As the software skill that you acquired doesn’t exist in the world or there is no demand for your skill in your industry is a total waste of time.

There is another story that I can share with you today.

(more…)

Continue Reading Post

Human Factors International (HFI) UX/UxD/HCI Certification Reality

Mandar Apte Art & Design, College & Institute, Company, Personal Experience, Reviews, User Experience Design Leave a comment

By graduate degree, I am a BFA Applied Art graduate. I know the UX field existed in India and World longer than I know but I came to know of its existence when I was at my first job around the year 2007. I am a multidisciplinary designer.

I opted to do User Experience Design/User Interaction Design/Human-Computer Interaction Design certification around the year 2016. I was going through HFI’s website since the year 2012.

HFI was having main three certifications Certified Usability Analyst (CUA), Certified Certified
Certified User Experience Analyst (CXA), Certified Digital Persuasion Analyst (CDPA).

My observation was HFI was increasing the cost of Certification every year by 15% to 20%.

When I first visited their website the cost was INR 75,000/- But when I registered for the CUA course it was INR 1,08,000/- Immediately the next year they increased rice to almost INR 1,20,000/-.

(more…)

Continue Reading Post

Web/Mobile App Monetisation & Revenue Generation Strategies

Mandar Apte Adobe Creative Cloud, Adobe Systems Incorporated, Animation Film Design, Apple, Apple macOS, Apps, Art & Design, Company, Graphic Design, Personal Experience, Print Design, Reviews, Typography, User Experience Design, Web Design Leave a comment

All business survives on net profit.

In accounting terms here is how you calculate Net Profit. i.e. (Total Business Revenue) – (Total Business Expenditure) = Net Profit

In the business world, there are two types of industries Service and the Product industry.

So if you are in the service industry you survive on paycheck by paycheck or hourly charges to the client. You have to work every hour of every day to get ends meet.

But if you are a product company you create a product based on your market research and user research. You find consumer problems/requirements/gaps in the market and then you try to solve them by creating your product in that category. So building a product is based on solving problems that your users are having.

In my case, I was a designer by profession. I graduated with a BFA (Bachelor of Applied Arts) in Advertising. After my first two jobs, I tried freelancing in the web, UX, print, branding and animation film industries. I was the lone proprietor of my business. I was doing everything talking to clients, executing a project, delivering it and then waiting for the final payment to be released. It was too much for me at that time.

(more…)

Continue Reading Post

My Experience Using Apple Watch for 5 Years and Apple’s Gamification Strategies

Mandar Apte Apple, Apple iOS, Apple watchOS, Apps, Art & Design, Company, Hardware, Inspiration, Personal Experience, Reviews, User Experience Design Leave a comment

In the year 2019, I bought myself an Apple iPhone 11 Pro 256GB and Apple Watch 5.

I use to use an Apple iPhone 5s with 16GB since 2016. But I was dissatisfied with the storage that it allowed me to use. Out of 16GB, 10GB was operating system 2GB was for Apps that were able to fit it 2GB was for Photos that I captured then I have to delete to make space for the next ones and 2GB was for other apps’ data.

It was total dissatisfaction with the Apple iPhone 5s.

In the year 2016, I was having sciatica. So I use to walk for 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours in the evening or night. I just completed walking 850 kilometres in a month to get rid of sciatica pain. I use to maintain my walking approx kilometre completed and days walk in week/month and a year. But I was out of sync with my blood pressure, heart rate, calories burned etc.

When Apple iPhone 11 Pro and Apple Watch 5 got released impressed with features like ECG, Fitness app, and Health app capabilities. And I choose 256 GB storage for my iPhone as that’s what I require to sustain all photographs, music, videos and other data for a year or two without deleting it.

I used Apple Watch daily for three years for tracking my outdoor walking exercises, ECG, Heart Rate Monitoring, Calory burning, Exercise hours tracking, Standup Hours tracking, receiving notifications, receiving a phone calls on my watch, reading SMS/Messages on my watch itself etc.

I was totally happy.

But one day I broke my Apple Watch’s Crown or Wheel. I was devastated. I contacted Apple Service Centre they said Apple Watch is unrepairable. And you are out of warranty too.

(more…)

Continue Reading Post

Males and Females in Human Resource (HR) Recruitment in the era of Feminism / Illusion of Patriarchy or Illusion of Brahmanical Patriarchy in Brahman Hatread Society

Mandar Apte Company, India / Bharat / Hindusthan, Maharashtra, Mumbai, Personal Experience, Reviews Leave a comment

With the invention of Feminism. The female audience was introduced to the term called Patriarchy and for Hindu haters Brahmanical Patriarchy. Feminism tells young female audiences to blame Male dominant society for their natural human body periods of pain. They somehow ask why boys should not suffer the same and why just girls or women.

Even with the disclosure of Twitter Files by Elon Musk. Vijaya Gadde from Twitter also got sued in court for her bias Twitter’s social media administration or moderation. (Vijaya Gadde is an American attorney, who served as general counsel and the head of legal, policy, and trust at Twitter. – Wikipedia) I remember her saying “Smash Brahmanical Patriarchy”, out of nowhere. Why American company’s social media head is blaming or shaming Brahmins from India / Bharat / Hindusthan for no harm done by them?

(more…)

Continue Reading Post

Accion Labs Employee Churn, Their Hiring Process & Corporate Culture. My Professional Experience with Accion Labs.

Mandar Apte Company, Personal Experience, Reviews Leave a comment

I was working in AccionLabs for a year. Worked on a single long project for my whole tenure.

At that time they use 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 was receiving a salary for the last 4 months. My project manager and CTO were kind of rude in every meeting they will discuss some random employees’ performance and why they should warn them to install PIP (Performance Improvement Program) on them or why should he or she has to be fired etc. They were a few billable employees who sat ideal doing nothing.

It was such a situation that every two or three days three or four employees use to resign and leave the company. The company ask them to resign but hosts a send-off party somehow out of no shame. Even two colleagues left told in the send-off party’s last speech that they had no work since joining or for the last four months and the company asked them to resign so they did. The churn rate was high.

(more…)

Continue Reading Post

With the release of macOS Big Sur & macOS Monterey, the user cannot format External Hard Disk to ‘Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted)’ format as there is no option to do the same.

Mandar Apte Apple, Apple macOS, Apps, Company, Hardware, Reviews, Tutorials 1 Comment

With the release of the macOS Big Sur Mac Operating System, Apple has removed the option under Disk Utility to allow users to format External Hard Drive to Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted) format.

Now there is only one option for Mac OS Extended (Journaled) but no option with encryption. It only allows users to format Hard Disk with Apple File System APFS without encryption, with encryption & with case sensitivity.

(more…)

Continue Reading Post

In-depth Review of Matrimony Website by Anuroop Wiwaha (anuroopwiwaha.com)

Mandar Apte Apps, Art & Design, Company, India / Bharat / Hindusthan, Maharashtra, Mumbai, Personal Experience, Reviews, User Experience Design, Web Design 1 Comment

I am using the Anuroop Wiwaha Matrimony Website for the last four-five years. I have used their mobile Apple iPhone app and website extensively for my bride search all along. There are a few points that I discovered that Anuroop Wiwaha Portal / Company improve 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:

  1. Every event they always talk about having 20,000 Profiles / Accounts of bride and groom registered on their portal. An average Anuroop Wiwaha account cost is INR 5,000/-.
  2. User (Bride or Groom) can’t register with a free account as they don’t support free accounts as the user has to pay an account fee upfront before registering to the portal. So it kind of gives assurance that user is at least serious about their search and even user has to submit identity proof within 7 days of registration. So in a way, it eliminates the possibility of fake accounts or frauds.
  3. Even with this money of 20,000 Accounts * 5,000 Fee, Bride or Groom Search is cumbersome and hectic. The mobile app is not full fledge as compared to a web portal. They are using non-native software technologies for the Apple iPhone app that app takes minutes to load or sometimes fails to load content and data.
(more…)

Continue Reading Post

The First iMac that I bought from Unicorn Infosolutions Pvt Ltd and my experience with the second-hand product that was given to me

Mandar Apte Apple, Company, Hardware, Personal Experience, Reviews Leave a comment

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.

(more…)

Continue Reading Post