Man Bites ‘Slumdog’

It was showering oscars for the 'Slumdog Millionaire' crew this week. The movie has got some mixed reviews and from my personal experience of watching the movie, I feel that its decently good enough. However, I am not sure that it's upto mark to receive so many oscars. I think the hype created by the media helped it somewhat. Anyways, everything said and done, I would recommend that it should be watched (one time is enough) as the positive spin to the story infuses hope and optimism which make the audience feel good.

Here is an interesting perspective by a person who used to live in slums but managed to break out of its shackles - http://www.newsweek.com/id/185798/page/1

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Ridiculous viewpoint or a tradition/law ??!!

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/23/world/middleeast/23widows.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&th&emc=th

The latest plan, proposed by Mazin al-Shihan, director of the Baghdad Displacement Committee, a city agency, is to pay men to marry widows. “There is no serious effort by the national government to fix this problem, so I presented my own program,” he said. When asked why the money should not go directly to the women, Mr. Shihan laughed. “If we give the money to the [war] widows, they will spend it unwisely because they are uneducated and they don’t know about budgeting,” he said. “But if we find her a husband, there will be a person in charge of her and her children for the rest of their lives. This is according to our tradition and our laws.”
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Starbucks Quote of the day #76

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"The irony of commitment is that it's deeply liberating - in work, in play, in love. The act frees you from the tyranny of your internal critic, from the fear that likes to dress itself up and parade around as rational hesitation. To commit is to remove your head as the barrier to your life."  

--- Anne Morris

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The Girl Effect

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Here is a great website that I came across today - http://www.girleffect.org Here's a paper related to this program:http://www.girleffect.org/downloads/Girl_Effect_Your_Move.pdf

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The Girl Effect is about girls and boys and moms and dads and villages and towns and countries. Here's the thing: Girls living in poverty are uniquely capable of creating a better future. But when a girl reaches adolescence, she comes to a crossroads. Things can go one of the ways for her - and everyone around her.
One: She gets a chance, gets educated, stays healthy and HIV negative, marries when she chooses, raises a healthy family, and has the opportunity to raise the standard of living for herself, her brothers, her family, her community, and her country.
Two: None of these things happen. She is illiterate, married off, isolated, pregnant, and vulnerable to HIV. She and her family are stuck in a cycle of poverty.

Start making a difference. Start the Girl Effect. It's not just a nice idea. It's the most important thing you can do.
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The Way I See It #17 (Starbucks Coffee cup quote)

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"The world bursts at the seams with people ready to tell you you’re not good enough. On occasion, some may be correct. But do not do their work for them. Seek any job, ask anyone out; pursue any goal. Don’t take it personally when they say ‘no’ - they may not be smart enough to say yes." - Keith Olberman

Instead, listen to your inner voice and believe in yourself. Never be afraid of stepping out of the line and doing the not-so-normal thing. There will be nay sayers, you just have to persist and have faith in yourself. Every experience, every failure, every interaction counts and gets you closer to your goal even if you don't realize it.
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Every day counts.... Every day matters..... Nothing goes waste....

I will elaborate on this idea later on.......

Alternative Methods to Design Research for Experience Design

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New methods and approaches for experience design merge the best of traditional user-centered design and genius design. The goal is to obtain insight into the attributes of an experience that would help or delight people based on research evidence. However, the process does not rely on following exactly what users say during research interviews and instead leverages the talent and imagination of designers to look beyond what users are saying to envision creative solutions. The goal is empathetic design, or experiencing a solution as a user would.

To enable this approach, designers can consider some alternative approaches to traditional research interviews and conceptual modeling. These techniques represent extensions to both the traditional user-centered design approach and the genius approach. The list of techniques I'll describe here is not exhaustive, and these techniques may not apply to all design situations—rather they offer options for those looking to expand their approaches to user research.

• storytelling and personalization
• triading
• games

http://uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2009/01/design-research-methods-for-experience-design.php

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