Jun 28, 2012

Anything you find out in Google in 20 seconds shouldn’t be asked in interview!!


Rethinking entrance process for higher education 

University entrance interview, a day in a life of aspiring students, which is going to play an instrumental role in deciding their future course of life, on this occasion one has to be very careful to ask the right questions, and to assess the candidates holistically. Even in that short period of interview candidates should be judged not only on technical grounds but on many more qualitative parameters as well, like their tenacity to learn, adaptability to new environment, receptiveness to new thoughts, respect to righteousness, having courage to put forth their ideas in which they believe, an ever questioning and inquisitive mind etc. different institutes use different mix of these and many other parameters to identify the right minds for their institutes and universities. Good news is that today institution’s focus is already started shifting from simply technical and quantitative aspects to perceptual, analytical and other qualitative aspects of candidate’s persona in the academic interview process.

Still many prominent educational institutes have apparently not been able to embrace the pleasant change which new information age is providing today. They still seem to be caught in the same old technical assessment issues when it comes to academic entrance process. Still asking basic technical and quantitative questions like it’s a quiz show running instead of an interview. For instance; questions like “Who conceptualised Garden City?” or “what are the sources of municipal finance?” or “What are the main elements/ components of so and so?” or “what do you know about such and such thing?” are wrong questions to ask today. Who designed what in which city in which year in which architectural style, how does it matter here, who cares? Asking such questions to a kid already or soon to be laced with smart-phone is irrelevant these days. Right question to ask are “How relevant you think is the garden city concept today?” (Explain the concept first, even if you have to), “What do you think can be possible innovative sources of income for a municipal body?” (no matter how bizarre is the answer, let’s face it) what are the takeaways from that architectural style (show them the images even if you have to, even if they don’t know a bit about that building or that architect), ask them about their perception, what do they think what’s so great or ugly about that design without being judgmental or biased, how relevant is that design today and so on.

When they have all the quantitative information at their fingertips through internet, social and professional networking and all, they can’t afford to memorize encyclopedia of architecture or planning to get admission in architecture or planning institute, there is no need to do that. These new breed of candidates should be rather judged on their aptitude to analytically infer and logically translate the available information for a better world. They should be judged on their apparent intensity and inclination to learn rather than memorizing capability. After all they will be here in institute for few months or years, so they can always be taught those technical aspects they don’t know yet, but these technical and factual questions are no ground to judge their capabilities, no ground to accept or to reject them at this point of time.  

By Anoop Jha    
    

Jun 21, 2012

It's been done this way since ages doesn’t make it the right way today!!

Rethinking academic research methodology.

So, you are up to research, thesis, dissertation or something, great!! Let’s consider few  things before we move ahead, considering few establish academic research norms, said or unsaid, which you might like to question, which you might like to challenge, but you won't, may be you can’t, because someone else is running the show.

Let’s understand the anatomy and objective of research and what should be the scope of any academic research for purposes, like thesis, PhD and so on and let’s see if there is any loophole in the well established century old research methodology and why it’s high time that research methodology has to reinvent itself.

What usually happens is that you choose a topic of your expertise and interest, narrow or wide and a mentor or guide as well either to guide you throughout or just because its mandatory to have one as per university norms, whether its architecture, planning or sociology or something else, it’s all the same. Then you start collecting supporting evidence and snippets of information first to validate the selection of research subject and then to back your conclusion. 

If you delve deeper you will realise that any chosen research subject or topic no matter how wide or narrow it is, has a very wide possible scope for exploration which we unjustifiably narrow down due to many reasons. You can have all the freedom to narrow down the subject or research topic itself which you choose but how can you narrow down and limit the research domain yourself and how can you decide in the beginning of research that which external influences to choose which might affects the subject, just because scope of research seems unfathomable to you for that particular subject or topic, just because someone told you to do so, just because your curriculum allows you the freedom to do so. If you are limiting your research to the review of few books on the subject,  selected by your guide who can have his or her own biased inclination towards those particular books or those authors,  if you limit your research only to some good books which are remaining  in your library after best books of the lot which has already been lifted by the academicians and professors long ago,  if you limit yourself to handful of primary sample survey which has its own grave issues and which is bound to give inaccurate picture, and if you limit yourself for any other similar innumerable reasons, you  are doing a big injustice to the research subject.

The issue with age old academic research methodology in context of today is that there always has been a strong stress on authenticity and completeness of content, fixed research structure, rigidity of data structuring, stress on literature and book reviews and first hand data gathering, there always has been submission to the authority of few established individuals in the field and imposition of idiosyncrasy and idealism of mentor or guide, ignoring the massive and continuous stream of relevant information which is available today and which is already growing and going to grow exponentially in the future. In the inertia of age old established research methodologies we are knowingly or unknowingly ignoring the possibilities that today’s technology provides us in conducting our research. Ignoring the technology of data mining and data exploration which they are already using ruthlessly in business and corporate domain is almost absolutely missing in academic research.

Two fundamental truth which majority of academicians today would be highly hesitant to be confronted with, is first that "Billions of half-baked data is much more reliable and contextual than handful of authentic publications when it comes to research and establishing a fact, excluding field of science and mathematics" and second that "Skewed focus towards book reviews and published literature for research purposes tend to glamorizes second hand work and dampen free and creative thinking spirit". There is nothing new and creative in quoting some author on some instance or subject, nothing new in putting someone else's inferences and analogies in your own words in your academic research report. When there is too much focus on structure and format (Thesis, synthesis, analogy, reference, bibliography and all) content starts losing its significance. This prominent conventional research methodology only leads to half baked conclusion at the end of your research span, because of just few numbers of cases studied and fewer perspectives of authors analysed.

Main constraint here is time and it’s up to you how you manage to get optimum exposure in that short span of time to arrive at valid inferences. More intense the exposure more authentic would be the conclusion or outcome. You are given a limited time to conduct and conclude your academic research whether thesis, dissertation or PhD.  You cannot stretch it infinitely. now you zoom in and pick up few published literature on the subject for your research reading pages, first to last, how many of these  books with "authentic" information you would be able to read in that assigned research span of few months or years, five, ten, twenty or fifty? That’s it? Come end of the research span and you are aware of point of view of five or fifty different authors, thinking you have known enough, thinking it’s time to conclude. No matter how very authentic information you have at the end to conclude your research, these are just point of views of handful of published authors out of millions equally talented or more or less out there in the world working, thinking, deliberating on the same subject, who never got the time, inclination, money or right publisher to get their work and thoughts published but who are constantly writing on forums, blogs, constantly tweeting and sharing and so on, may be you also missed out the brilliant thoughts on the subject because it didn’t reach your library shelf, because your guide didn’t recommended it to you, may be you didn’t have enough money to buy that book or eBook or may be because it couldn’t get the attention of the masses due to competition with shear number of literature on the same subject.

It’s high time that students and researchers need to be encouraged to look for unconventional, previously unexplored and untapped streams of data for mainstream academic research by their colleges, universities and most importantly from their mentors and guides in their dissertation and PhD,  sources like massive free and dynamic data from online environment of blogs, discussion forums,  audio-visual data from established or amateur masses, tiny bits of information which individually doesn’t make any sense but which collectively presents fairly recognisable, logical and surprising patterns, and it’s high time that such research methodologies should get mainstream recognition. It’s time that they should shift their fixated attention from literature reviews to data source explorations and analysis, broadening the domain of literature itself.

You see, it would be much more exciting, authentic and wholesome an experience to explore from the dynamic, widespread and crude "sea of knowledge" rather than exploring from few well-maintained but stagnate "resource lakes".


BY- Anoop Jha 

Jun 19, 2012

Disposal on the go - For a cleaner city you deserve.

Disposal at the source of generation- Case of Travel generated waste!!


Environmentally responsible
waste management 
Some of us occasionally of habitually buy and carry a plastic pack of chips, a paper wrapped snack, a can of coke, a bottle of juice, a paper mug of coffee, fruits and so on in our car or other vehicles while traveling in city, and disposing those paper, plastic, metal or organic residues in a responsible ways becomes an issue. Depending on the Education level, economic exposure, existence of local transport and environment laws, pro activeness of implementation measures, people’s behavior vary in a cityscape across the region, across the cities of world. Even within a particular city people show different level of responsible behavior depending on economic profile of zone, surveillance and enforcement level.

In many cities of developing countries people tend to pollute the city roads and transit routes by dumping such food waste and byproducts from their vehicle irrespective of occupants education and economic level even in presence of such laws to prevent them, due to lack of willingness to keep their cities clean or lack of enforcement measures or absence of sensible waste disposal infrastructure. Garbage bins if provided are either so scarce in numbers, so inaccessibly located, are in utter unhygienic conditions, surrounded by mounds of open dumped waste, either overflowing of underutilized, that people even if they make up their mind to act in environmentally responsible ways they immediately lose their interest to do so.

In this particular kind of waste generation scenario which emerges on the go should have a “disposal mechanism on the go” itself. Garbage generated within vehicle should be disposed off from vehicle only at pre-identified locations, why to carry it everywhere you go, why to keep garbage in your car just because you couldn’t get the time for weeks to dispose it off on foot to some disposal bin located somewhere. Why not to stop them throwing garbage on road by providing them hygienic garbage bins approachable from within the car along the transit routes, at places where traffic is bound to be slow, somewhere near toll plaza ticket counter, somewhere near the parking entrance, in some of dedicated service lanes of the city etc. 

Jun 18, 2012

Compulsory flexi hour provision for a smooth and sober city transit

City transit infrastructure without institutional control and public policy in not going to work!

Traffic Calming
Strategies 
In a buzzing city of developing countries where people are rushing everyday to reach their regular destinations like offices, institutions etc., desperately trying to reach before cut-off times assigned by the administration of these respective organizations, traffic chaos is bound to happen leading to traffic law violation, travel anxiety, road rage, minor or major accidents etc. By applying a cut off time for reaching work place, institutions etc. people are forced to become ignorant to each other’s convenient and safety while on road, because each one of them has something at stake, their job, their carrier, their salary, marks, etc. People are in hurry because if they won’t reach office or institutions before time they will be considered undisciplined employee, students and so on, they will be bullied and can be subjected to monetary penalty and disciplinary actions. No one wants to go through that pain.

Organizational independence in a city environment is apparently a productive model, but at times leads to chaos. In lack of public stake in private organizations in those policy levels which are likely to affect city functionality, many private institutions tend to have monopolistic and dictatorship approach at their internal policy level, like assigning cutoff time to reach work place leading to city transport problems. City governing institutions have to have some control or say over those functional elements of city wide organizations, primarily for offices and other work places, which directly affect the transit health of a city. Excluding the critical and lifeline works, there has to be a city wide blanket flexible timing system for work places, which provision should be made compulsory for a sober and responsible transit behavior of any city.

Flexible timing strategies might include a reasonable buffer time to reach work place, possibility to occasionally work from home, different office timing for different zones of city, etc. based on rigorous analysis of transit data pattern and land use analysis. Public institutions will have to work hand in hand with private organization, stakeholders and communities for this purpose. Cities and organization also need to increasingly focus their policies towards target oriented work rather than judging work done by the time spent at work place. More the flexibility provided at anchor destinations within city, smoother will be the traffic and this is not possible without the timely and sensible planning intervention at functional level of city wide organizations and transport system.  

By : Anoop Jha

Jun 16, 2012

All the Planning Effort goes in vain if not implemented and maintained well.

Why we plan something which we can't maintain!!

Or rather why we can't also plan how to maintain the same infrastructure while we are busy preparing city blueprint and master plan. 

Infrastructure without stringent maintenance measures is like .."a plan for how to waste the precious resources in efficient way".    

An efficient infrastructure if not maintained well, leads to speedy wastage of fine resources

Jun 11, 2012

Right Color for Right Occasion

Comprehensive Color Matrix with associated Values 

Colors preferred and used for different occasions, purposes etc. Gray highlighted areas point to colors and respective usages, i.e. Colors appropriate for Corporate Presentation, Colors most used for advertisement, used in Interiors, Colors naturally preferred by different genders, etc.  

Jun 8, 2012

How Facebook incited design sense in layman.

Do you see cropped family photograph mounted on living room wall? Usually not!!

The only fundamental difference between a designer and a layman in context of design is the way they see all things intangible or concrete. When graphic designers look at something, they see it as a building block for their design subject exploring possibilities to infuse their creativity, but laymen see things as it is. Graphic Designers usually pick up a subject or a set of elements then break them into pieces only to rearrange them again making it a little abstract and hence interesting. It’s too tricky a job for a layman, so they simply leave this design work to designers.


It you try to recall a classic family photograph of your grandparents in black & white or your parent’s photograph in sepia or your own picture with your wife or friends in full blown HD colors, you will find one common thing in all these, no matter what the age of photograph is, all these photographs have been clicked with a wide field of view to capture all the subjects “in totality” with slight “margin” on all the sides. When we take a photograph especially a family one, we not only want to capture the individuals but we also want to capture that beautiful moment, that ambiance and that environment, so we tend to shoot a photograph with larger frame capturing surrounding environment of the person or subject as well.  
   

When Facebook introduced Timeline feature, it empowered a common man to be a designer knowingly or unknowingly with a tool called Cover photograph, most of you have used this feature. What is interesting here is that this linear space allocated for the cover photograph is pre-decided and has been freezed only with a little flexibility in terms of adjustment of photographs. Now all one has to do is to upload a picture here, adjust it vertically and job is done. Now when you upload your family photograph here, that initial carefully captured photograph with extra margin around the subjects and surrounding ambiance and so on is all gone and you will see a new cropped version of the same photograph in the cover photograph section of your facebook. And surprisingly you will start liking this new cropped version of the photograph even more now. Ever wondered why? Because you have applied a basic thumbrule of graphic design here knowingly or unknowingly, thanks to facefook feature i.e. to crop the image to an extent so that it start gaining abstractness and hence making it more interesting. Fortunately that space provided for cover picture is such that it allows you to crop the image only from two sides which makes the image more abstract and dynamic. See everyone is designer now!! No wonder why you are spending more time on facebook since the timeline was introduced!! 

Jun 7, 2012

Need for instant settlement mechanism and policy for minor road incidents.


For a safer city

Nature of most of minor traffic accidents which involves two or more than two parties is such that damage is caused less due to the incident but more due to post incident rage, argument and settlement process. And unfortunately people are left to settle the issue on their own in lack of immediate settlement and relief mechanism when the incident occurs. Irony is that insurance provision is there for major damages of life and assets due to accident but no immediate functional rescue and settlement system with an agreed token amount/ repair coupon system etc. for minor accidents involving two or more parties which leads to road rage and is much frequent and growing phenomenon in many developing countries.

It’s high time that government need to intervene and come up with a policy which is acceptable to majority of transport community and common man to deal with issues of road rage. Government in consultation with insurance providers, enforcement agencies and community should prepare a full-fledged compulsory instant settlement mechanism and policy which should work even in absence of law enforcement personals, for minor road incidents  involving low damage to asset and no damage to life, incidents like scratch on car body, vehicle being hit by other vehicle with minimal damage, thing like that which can lead to small to major road rage incidents. A scheme which help neutralise the anger and argument between two or more involved parties, leaving them with a win win situation. Some strategies can be like making compulsory blanket third party insurance system for even minor road incidents with focus on on-the-spot monetary settlement or agreement in addition to the said policy.

Jun 6, 2012

Jun 5, 2012

Educated nuisance on road

A common sight on the urban roads of developing countries

Traffic, poor transit infrastructure and bad transport management is always there to blame, an easy excuse even for mistakes made by many on road purposefully of unknowingly.  Mistakes apparently minor but putting life and assets at risk. Mistakes apparently they don’t even get panelised for. Mistakes driven by petty motives and justified by Silly excuses, creating a chain of indiscipline on road. These are not the unprivileged and uneducated masses but supposedly rich and well educated strata of the society, those who can afford car in the first place. Even if they are not driving themselves they allow certain obvious driving blunders to happen day and night by not pointing out mistakes committed by their drivers. Unfortunately these educated offenders have spend half of their life getting best of the education polishing their intellect but hardly few dedicated hours given in driving schools. Our education system focuses so much on building intellect that it doesn’t even care about something which is so vital for life, i.e. driving safe on road, not to speak of morality lessons for roads. Driving lessons should be compulsory part of education curriculum. And if parents themselves are transport illiterate how will they teach skills, logic and ethic of road to their children.  No wonder there are so many so frequent road rage incidents across the world.

A very frequent, obvious but unnoticed driving mistake that they commit here on road mostly purposefully is driving with side mirror in closed position or even without rear view / side mirrors in cars at times and it becomes more dangerous a phenomenon when clubbed with changing lanes without indicators. And apparently they don’t get panelized for such acts most of the time. Indicator example is equally true for bikers. How can they afford doing such things putting others and their own life in danger? Reasons can be many but most obvious explanation seem to be that they love their car very much especially the side mirrors and they are afraid that some passing by car will touch, hit or break the side mirror and that’s why they prefer to keep the side mirror closed and there is always an excuse for that act i.e. traffic, reduced carriageway due to encroachment, other people driving unsensibly on road and so on.

What they forget while busy negotiating the traffic jams through gridlocked roads and narrow streets while trying to protect rear view mirror of their cars that this same mirror in open position increases the virtual envelop of car and hence increases safety envelop of their car as well.  Side mirrors not only help you assess the traffic situation behind you and hence help you plan your next maneuver on road more logical and safe but it also helps increase the distance between your car and other cars passing by, hence reducing the probability of other cars coming in contact with your car body. Not to speak of ease in parking which rear view/ side mirrors provide. Was little puzzled to see that some car manufacturers even launch their lower segment models without having rear view mirror on one side posing it’s a luxury car accessory not a necessity. They need to understand the difference between luxury and necessity!! Mirrors for car have been invented for some purposes and have evolved in course of time just for your own safety, so better start using them now.

You might also like to explore some thoughts on new strategic intervention to reduce transport accident and casualties in other post here.