Back from India: Mission debrief

I’m back from India!

I’ve been on a 2-week trip to India attending a 10-day course series offered by the renowned usability consulting firm called Human Factors International (HFI) (read more in my original post).

So I’m now in Dubai airport with 8 hours of waiting time till my connecting flight back home. That’s plenty of time to reflect on the whole trip and that’s what I’m going to try and do here.

Overall, I’m really glad to say that objective of the trip was achieved in excess of what I’ve expected. I got out of the courses with such solid foundation of the material that it feels like money well spent. But what’s more important is that it reaffirmed my passion for this field since it was my first official exposure to the principles and methodologies followed in the world of usability and human-computer interaction design. I can safely say now that I’ve truly found my career passion!

For the rest of this post, I’m going to make a quick run through some of my observations and experiences during the trip in general. The outline will be as follows:

• Training courses
• First impressions
• Hotel
• Food
• City (Bangalore)
• People
• Funniest moments

Training courses

It’s really been a while since I was thoroughly impressed by the quality of an onsite training. For the past year and half, I was plagued with a streak of really bad training sessions that were in consistently horrible quality, both in terms of content and presentation.

This might be part of the reason HFI’s training seemed so impressive to me. But that’s not to deny they were actually well thought-out and presented. We had 3 instructors for the 4 courses, and they were all experienced working usability engineers with impressive academic background.

Honestly, my biggest fear going to India was finding it difficult or impossible to understand their unique English accent. However, none of that was ever an issue. All of the instructors were really easy to understand and their vocabulary was really good they could deliver complex concepts like a breeze.

My only complaint about the training is HFI’s decision to hand us the material (slides and supplements) in paper. By the end of the course, we had a huge pile of training material, so huge I had to pay for a 10 KG excess luggage weight that costed me a hefty amount at the Bangalore airport. I was really pissed off!

First impressions

It’s funny: my biggest mistake going to India was going through Dubai! It was a huge downgrade leaving Dubai airport and being greeted in Bangalore airport. The difference is impossible to describe in simple words, but Bangalore’s airport can be described in a simple analogy: a glorified mall, with planes instead of shopping carts!

For example:

• It is too small travelers actually stumble upon each other trying to move around the place. Also, some of check-in lines extended beyond the doors to outside the airport!
• It is so dirty in and out it made me question whether the department of sanitation was on a strike.
• It had all these complex procedures and pointless forms you have to fill when you’re coming in or out. Really aggravating when no other airport you’ve been through made you go through them.

Hotel

HFI recommended that I stay at this hotel which is a walking distance away from the training center. It’s supposed to be the best business hotel in Bangalore, and it’s really not that far from it. Although it’s a little bit on the expensive side, my experience staying in it for two weeks was generally positive. The best part is availability of broadband wireless internet in the rooms which really helped me stay in touch with family and friends.

Food

The hotel had a complementary breakfast, which wasn’t too bad. However, the training center served the same exact 5 meals for lunch for 2 weeks. All were traditional Indian meals. Speaking of which, next time somebody asks you to describe Indian food, go ahead and use the following pointers:

• Tell them it’s spicy. No actually too spicy. You know what, just tell them it’s spicy enough to build a nuclear bomb, provided sufficient Uranium.
• Tell them it’s too oily. If you have a minor form of cholesterol like I do, Indian food would be your best option to step up the game!
• Tell them it’s too sweet. Their dessert menu will almost always have that 1 item that makes you think you’re digesting loads of sugar.

I thought I was going to starve there the first couple of days. Then I realized the hotel had it’s own restaurant which served some humanly meals like good-old burgers and noodles. What a life saver!

City

Bangalore is an industrial city. It’s heart of India’s IT industry. Many big corporations have offices there and Microsoft is even building its very own university. When I read all that on the Web I thought I was going to a very hi-tech city, or at least something in that category.

With all the development that’s going in, you’d think the government would pay attention to to the outlook of the city, or at least provide it with uninterrupted stream of power supply. I guess that was too much to ask, because power interruption was very normal for them, but very frustrating for me.

I used to walk back and forth from the training center everyday. I’ll admit that I’ve never seen the larger portion of Bangalore, but from what I’ve seen, the city is extremely poorly-maintained. Streets look like they were last paved in celebration of India’s independence. The largest crack I could spot in one of the streets was enough to replicate a mini swimming pool in your backyard. It didn’t look far from that especially when it rained. I was tempted!

Pollution is another thing you can’t help but painfully notice walking down the street. There are apparently no rules imposing regular maintenance of automobiles and those 3-wheeler things.

Traffic is more of a fun movie to watch than an absolute disaster. At a big intersection that I used to pass, there used to be these traffic contentions, involving the following:

• Cars
• Bikes
• Bicycles
• 3-wheelers (whatever they’re called)
• People crossing
• Cows (also crossing)
• Dogs (just screwing around)

One of those days I just stood watching how the traffic contention would clear out. I’m telling you it was the most fun I had while being there. I’m pretty sure I was there for several minutes while dogs were dancing to the rhythm of the horns. The cows got their way in the end. Fair enough.

People

The most interaction I had was with the people who were taking the courses with me. The general impression I got is that Indian people are very social and welcoming. In these kind of courses, I usually stay away from emotional attachment due to the short time we have together. But some of our class mates insisted we go out for bowling. On another day, he suggested we stay after the course for some open heart-to-heart discussions, which was really fun. On the last day, he even arranged for a McDonald’s meal which was a breath of fresh air for me, albeit a spicy one.

Funniest moment

The funniest moment I can remember was that night when I was watching TV in my room. Here is what I saw:

I was flipping through the channels; lots of boring stuff. Then I stopped on a channel where an Indian version of American Idol was on. I curiously watched it for few minutes as some aspiring Indian singer was giving a performance. One of the judges seemed to be a popular Indian singer and he was really into that guy’s singing. He really loved the song that he felt the need to go out on stage in the middle and start dancing with the guy who’s singing. So he started making all these trademarked Indian dancy moves, until he did that move that just cracked me up. Here is what he did:

He pulled a scarf the singing guy was wearing. He pulled it from his neck and literally cleaned his balls with it! I’m not kidding. He held it from end to end and rubbed it again his balls in a dancy move. Right after that he returned the scarf to the guy and put it around his neck again. That’s it. He did all that and everybody in the audience chanted and clapped for that "cool move". Man, am I missing something here?!

Conclusion

The short version of all of this is:

• Training was awesome.
• Country wasn’t even close.

I realize now that Middle Eastern culture is far different than Indian’s culture. We’re so different in many ways. Sure, we share some family values but as far as everything else is concerned, we have more in common with the Western culture than the Indian counterpart. This isn’t meant to offend anybody, it’s just my observation and it’s just the way it is.

Below is the photo album for my entire trip. Enjoy!

Trip to India