User Experience in Movies

This is all about designing better User Experience (UX) which I noticed and appreciated in one of the movie. “UX is the way a person/user feels about using a product, system or service”.

There was a Hindi movie titled “A Wednesday” which was released on 2008 and remade in Tamil on 2009 as “Unnai Pol Oruvan” starring Naseeruddin Shah and Kamal Hassan in lead roles respectively. The film tells the story of a Police Commissioner, who gets an anonymous call. The anonymous caller demands the release of 4 militants in exchange for information about the many bombs planted across city by him. The police commissioner upon confirming the seriousness, gets into conversation with Anonymous caller (Naseeruddin Shah/Kamal Hassan).

Go on… I won’t narrate entire story and bore you if you have watched the movie and no worries if you have not watched it, included few stills from the movie to support my observations.

I watched the remake version first, while I was scanning the television channels recently, it happened to watch “A Wednesday” original version being telecast and out of curiosity I ended up watching entire movie. Where-in I noticed the particular scene in the remake version was done well compared to original.

Let me explain the background before getting on to the details: The anonymous caller chooses rooftop of a tall building under construction and surrounded by such buildings under construction. Sets up his base of operations, equipped with various modern technology gadgets and instruments and starts negotiating with the Police Commissioner. Below are the stills from original and remake respectively, observe them and find out which one gives better experience?

Here you go…….

Persona: Tech savvy common man

Stills from original

This persona is said to be Tech savvy common man and if you observe gadgets, it does not strongly support the persona, this visual is not strong enough to depict the term tech savvy as he has a laptop, portable TV, couple of charger, mobile phone and telephone instrument.

Stills from remake

Here the User Experience Designer did a good job, this persona has a table full of many gadgets which brings trust in viewers, first impression itself says this persona is tech savvy.

Stills from original

Notice that, he has a table and white table cloth, a common man who is challenging the city police would never dare to design his table. All he want is 5 hrs of non-interruption from strangers and tallest place may be for better signals. I am sure at this stage he wouldn't have thought of bringing a white cloth to cover the table as he wouldn't be interested in aesthetics of the table.

Stills from remake


Better design always empathize the users. Here the persona uses available resources in the construction area and sets up his base. They are materials used for construction, a plywood, couple of drums makes his table, which is a sensible design. When the user experience designers, does a contextual field research and puts himself in users position would lead to better design or product.

Stills from original 


This persona will be using multiple sim cards and handsets for switching the location dynamically so that it is difficult for police cyber team to locate him. But to support this, the persona just has couple of mobile handsets and few sim cards which is not enough to prove.

Stills from remake


Notice that this persona has five handsets without the cover, interlinked and he is inserting a sim card to one of the handset and gets into conversation with police officer which is more promising from the end users perspective that to claim that this persona is tech savvy and can challenge the police cyber team. This visual (inter linked handsets) act as a signifiers to the affordance of switching location dynamically..

What happens in movie is apart but being a user experience designers it’s our responsibility to empathize users, understand the demography, ethnography, conduct contextual inquiry and intense interview of user to design successful product or services.

Warning - don't mess-up with proximity.

Today I saw a subject line "7 Fatal Risks of Cloud Computing" in my inbox. I am working for a company which is very active on Cloud Computing, thought of understanding the risks of cloud computing, was eager to read and understand the risks of cloud computing.


When opened the link and saw this page (Screen Capture 1).

Screen Capture 1

I scanned the title and a one liner instruction saying "Please take a moment to answer the following questions then click submit to continue". As said in the instruction there is couple of questions below and a "submit" button. This feedback page has set a right expectation with its users.


As I was eager to understand the risks of the cloud computing, quickly answered the couple of questions and clicked the "Submit" button. Annoyed to see the page being filled with so many error/feedback messages in red (screen capture 2).

Screen Capture 2

I was wondering why there should be so many error messages as I have answered only two questions? Then wide opened my eyes to see big list of form fields on the right column. Being a User Experience Designer I started evaluating the design and understanding the design problems instead of understanding the Cloud Computing Risks (focus is lost).


This is a clear example of what happens when the design is screwed up. This design lost the potential user, also the objectives. 


Proximity, one of the usability principle not effectively used. The layout is divided into two column; instruction, questions and submit button are placed in left pane and the other fields in right pane. With this division, there is clear separation which sets the users mental model that he/she is expected to answer only two questions and submit to get the Cloud Computing Risks. But the page did not behaviour as expected. Instead, user was supposed to fill in other details before clicking on the submit button. It is hard to relate in that fashion with the current design.


Having the questions and form fields in a single column would have been better approach which sets right expectation in the users and brings in strong association saying the user has to answer those questions along with filling form before clicking on the submit button.