Sherlock Holmes (2009) & why you need to be a House M.D. fan to 'get it'

Sherlock Holmes (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0988045/) is a re-imagining of Arthur Conan Doyle's detective, played indelibly by Jeremy Brett (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Brett) for the 4 Granada television series. Jeremy Brett to me is the quintessential Holmes. Perfect down to the last bone. I'm a confessed Sherlock Holmes fanboy and I've read no other detective series as exhaustively as I have read Holmes. 

Therefore, I figured it would be quite interesting to observe my reaction to Guy Ritchie's adaptation, given his fearsome reputation for making movies that resemble the blunt objects with which the characters murder each other. 

So I saw Sherlock Holmes. Once. Twice. And loved it! What's going on here? For anyone who is even a minor Sherlock Holmes fan would be horrified at Holmes' filthy appearance (not matching with Conan Doyle's description of Holmes' love for 'cat like cleanliness'), horrified that Holmes has had flings with Irene Adler (although Conan Doyle does say she was the only woman who 'mattered' to him). 

For one, Holmes fan or not, Sherlock Holmes (2009) is fun. Like Congo (1995) [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112715/] is fun. 

The next thing is the casting. Robert Downey Jr. (RDJ) is on fire these days and I am a fan. Iron Man has grown on me & RDJ was hilarious in Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0942385/). Jude Law plays Watson and looks Watson and is perfect.

But what's the hidden sauce here? It's House M.D. (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0412142/)believe it or not. House M.D. is based entirely on Sherlock Holmes. Only, House is not a detective, but a doctor. Watson is called Wilson. House even stays at 221B! And House M.D. reinvented Sherlock Holmes to me. After I had seen the last of the Jeremy Brett series and longed for more, House M.D. came in and filled the gap. But wait, this Holmes was different! He was still analytical, the 'grand templar of rationality' and so on. But he was also different. He stole Wilson's clothes, his money, played pranks and manipulated people. He had little flings and bickered with Wilson.

Sherlock Holmes (2009) is as influenced by House M.D. as Casino Royale was by the Bourne Series. In both cases, we have a new interpretation that brings colour to the franchise. When I was watching Sherlock Holmes, I felt like I was watching an extended episode of House, same as when I was watching Casino Royale, I felt I was watching Bourne. 

So, I like the new Holmes & Watson and their world. The purists might snort at the new beginnings  and say it 'cheapens' things, but I argue that this is Holmes for the twenty first century, even though the movie is set in a different era.

So, go watch it! And then, start watching House M.D. I started in November, 2004 & haven't been able to stop since! 

Why the iPad is for old people? (Not the diaper, the device)

Various tech pundits have said that, the newly released iPad is for 'older people'. http://gizmodo.com/5458855/the-apple-ipad-is-for-old-people.

I'm trying to hazard a guess as to why that is so.

You see I attended this talk recently. http://www.upabangalore.in/mwiki/mediawiki-1.15.1/index.php?title=Jan_2010_talk. One of the speakers outlined the concept of Personas in design. These are dummy people, with character & quirks & needs & wants that designers setup & then test against. 

Who is the Persona numero uno at Apple? One Mr.Steven P Jobs. It is anecdotal that Apple builds what 'Steve wakes up and wants looking at his mirror'. Any surprise then, that the iPad makes the oldies happier than the rest? Or is supposed to? 

Do I buy the fact that the iPad is for oldies? I'm not sure I do. But this seems to lend credence to the beliefs of those who do.

My take on the "User Experience research tools, IA case studies, and overview of London UX scene" @ Yahoo! Bangalore last week

As an aside, we had difficulty entering the conference room where the talk was on. This is so because the organizer(s) didn't mention a contact person name/venue details. You can't pick faults with free & interesting talks, but this would greatly improve the UX of any further talks :-)

To the talk now. The central point of the talk(s) were the cultural differences between European & Asian audiences & therefore the impact of these subtleties on UX design. UX is User eXperience, for the uninitiated.

What I picked from the talk - 

- Details of how designers design. HINT: They create Personas.

- Details on how large companies, e.g. Vodafone address cultural subtleties so their Product people, sitting in one geography can design products & services for everyone. 

Personas

Dr. Anxo Cereijo Roibás described how designers go about designing. They create Personas. They collect a great deal of information about people using their product. Then they gradually group all of this into a Persona, name that Persona & use a limited collection of Personas to design. This helps focusing the design to the needs to specific people rather than specific spreadsheets.

Ethnographic Research for UX

Vodafone picked three countries - Egypt, India & South Africa to gauge user behavior w.r.t to new services. 

They had two sets of people in mind. One, the top & middle of the pyramid. English speaking users with smartphones. The objective was to test user expectations for the use of social networking applications using mobile phones.

They had two types of tasks. One, where they had SMS's sent to the users with requests to respond immediately with information - Where are you? What do you see? How do you feel about that? 

The test users sent back responses either through SMS or through MMS (if the answer required a photo/video).

The other type of tasks were more deliberate & needed planning. 

One interesting thing they came up with, with this research is the concept of a map in the mind of the Indian user. It's more to do with a general lay of the land & a bunch of landmarks, rather than precise directions like you see in Google Maps.


Surprise, surprise. Google Maps this week released an update to Google Maps for India, based on this very concept! http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/go-thataway-google-maps-india-learns-to.html


The bottom-of-the-pyramid users were administered the tasks by local researchers, since many had not even heard of a mobile phone. 


Some interesting findings:

• When asked how they would create a profile for themselves, that other people could see, most came up with a design that looked like a Facebook profile! Complete with a photo at the top corner.
• A lot of people wanted a 'service' through which they could list the skills they had, so others could find them and give them work to do. There seems to be a gaping hole in the Rural Job Classifieds market!
• A lot of people indicated they would like some way to maintain bank accounts using mobile phones, given that it would be hard/impossible to do so in any other way.

So, all in all, this was a nice session with some key learning. Looking forward to more. Bravo! Yahoo! for doing this!

Top 10 English Movies of the Decade - Hashique's Take

Here are Hashique's picks.

• Gladiator
• Inglorious bastard
• Little miss sunshine
• Munich
• Memento
• Cinderalla man
• Ratatouile
• Departed
• Thank you for smoking
• A good year

Top 10 English Movies of the Decade - My take

How did I come upon this list? My focus was on impact. Which movies changed their genre, changed film making, told unique stories?


So, here are my top 10.
Lord of the Rings Trilogy


For redefining fantasy movies. Forever. In scale, in detail, the LOTR trilogy is a classic.


In the story telling section, my picks are:


Memento


For redefining how a story can be told to a film audience. Memento's reverse chronological timeline was incredibly bold. Memento has since been endlessly (and horribly) copied. 


Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind


For telling the story of a man trying to save his memories. And for having the incredible creativity to actually show how someone's memories can be erased. Breathtakingly beautiful.


Hotel Rwanda


The Schindler's List of this decade. If you were not nauseous when Don Cheadle drives over thousands of dead bodies, you are definitely not human. 


On the fun side, here are three picks


Batman Begins


For portraying Batman as he should have always been portrayed. Darkly. The menace of Batman was never so apparent. Disclosure: I am a childhood Batman fanboy.


Bourne Ultimatum (and the series in general)


For reinventing action films. Remember the Waterloo scene. All other action movies will forever be compared with this gold standard.

Casino Royale

For reinventing 007 after he had become boring thanks to Mr.Brosnan. The raw energy & unbridled arrogance meant this was the 2nd best Bond (after Sean Connery, of course) and in it's own right, an excellent thriller.

Ratatouille


Pixar took story telling so many steps forward with their films this decade that it's astounding. To have the courage to follow through on the whimsical idea of a rat who loves gourmet food & cooking and offers deep philosophical advice is itself praiseworthy, but they also made this film that has a heart.


The Incredibles


Another one from the stables of Pixar. Again, a new take. This time on super heroes. The brilliant take of, what if super heroes were hiding amongst you trying to get on with their lives as gasp! insurance claims processors?! And how would you feel if you were slighted by one of them? Fresh take on super heroes. 

District 9


Well, notice there aren't ANY sci-fi films here at all. What a pathetic decade! Well there was Star Trek, and countless Star Wars movies but I'm not a trekkie. I would have picked Minority Report in the sci-fi section, but then came District 9. If anything, I loved it for it's contradictions. Alien movie where humans ghetto off aliens? Check. Highly advanced aliens who love to eat garbage? Check. Lurking sub plot of apartheid? Check. 


Honorable Mention:

Inglourious Basterds

For taking a WW-II movie, injecting the Wild West into it and producing an alternative reality for the end of the war. But in terms of impact on film, no where near QT's masterpiece - Pulp Fiction.