We recently had the privilege of working with the fine folks at B Labs, an embedded software technology startup that aims to change how the embedded systems industry works. Have a look at what we did for them, and then read on for an interview with Bahadir Balban, their CEO.

Where did B Labs come from? What is your vision for the company?

We want to change the way mobile platforms are designed by making the virtualization layer as standard in all mobile devices. In servers, virtualization is well recognized, but in mobile devices, there is either an operating system, baremetal software, or real-time software. A hypervisor is a layer that brings all of them into one runtime.

In a competitive and yet highly technical field, how does B Labs differentiate itself from its competition?

There are several hypervisors out there for mobile platforms. All of them are focused on a proprietary niche. Today there is no wide acceptance of any solution. We want to use a strategy that starts small, but eventually influences the industry to adopt the technology.

What is the biggest hurdle facing the virtualization industry of today?

The biggest hurdle is that a hypervisor is seen as an additional layer among the aforementioned hardware and the OS, and current vendors could not make a sufficiently compelling value proposition to ignite the change.

What is the best part about working in the field?

Best part is that we might have a modest chance to make a change in a deep technology area that affects the mobile industry.

Why did you come to Vesess for your website revamp? What did you like about the experience, and what can we do better next time?

I think Vesess design talent is top notch. I believe with the budget we had you did the best, but if we had a greater budget, one step up would be also collecting information from us that would make our side less of a blocking factor in progress.

Web has moved from PC to mobile. So now the question comes…does your site work in all mobile platforms ? Here are some tools that can help you there.

As the number of people using mobile devices increases, so too does the pressure to ensure that our websites look good and are legible on a mobile device. The ideal, and unrealistic situation, would be to test on real handsets, but obviously this would be impossible for most designers. Fortunately, there are number of tools available online, allowing you to put your site through its mobile paces.

Six Tools For Testing Designs On Mobile Devices

Students at the MIT Media Lab have developed a super cool prototype of a computer system which can turn any surface into an interactive display screen. It can be coupled with Internet, to create a digital **6th sense**. Check this out.

Nice visualization of people editing Barack Obama’s wikipedia page from October 2005 to November 2008 (by Jamie Dubs).

As geeks, we’ve been using P2P software for years. Starting with Napster in 1999, and the plethora of different filesharing networks that followed, right up to torrents, which we all use and love today, we’ve seen the technology being used for a number of worthwhile causes. Thus, when Sean came to us with his plan to put it to use in the real world, we jumped at the chance.

Today, after a lot of thought and hacking, we’re proud to announce the launch of p2prescue.org, the web hub of what Sean describes as a U.S.-based, not-for-profit organization working to raise awareness about and deliver support to Sri Lanka. At a time where NGOs and aid organisations are a dime a dozen in Sri Lanka, it was an experience to work with a group of people who were approaching our nation’s problems from a different angle. People have needs, and indeed, people have always had needs, and always will. What makes an aid effort stand out from the rest, however, is how they choose to approach these needs.

Focused on enabling sustainable development through training people, and creating jobs, Sean dubs the organisation’s approach P2P, or People to People. In a world where organisations are becoming increasingly bureaucratic, it is good to see one that is choosing to interact at the grassroots level. It is a good reminder to everyone that aid is not just about money.

The P2P Rescue Shop, powered by WP e-Commerce

From a technical point-of-view, the Shop portion of the site is an important one. Using the free plugin WP e-Commerce, we setup a virtual shopping cart via which visitors can choose to purchase the items that Sean’s various P2P projects have created. At the moment, the Tsunami Birdhouses seem to be hot, and rightly so – made entirely from items salvaged during the December 2004 Tsunami, these creations are a real life example of using what you have, one of P2P Rescue’s main dictums.

Socially, the Voices section is certainly the website’s most striking feature. Taking the form of a weblog, this section is where the people behind P2P Rescue have their say. From status updates from Sean himself, to stories of how the bird houses were made, this is the face of P2P Rescue, and is certainly what our readers will find most interesting. If you’ve never been to Sri Lanka, and are curious about what it’s like, the Voices section is a great place to wet your interest.

All in all, we learnt a lot from P2P Rescue. As a web organisation ourselves, its novel approach to communication in the real world made us challenge many of our own ideas and preconceptions, and helped us realise that no matter where you are, the only constructive way forward is indeed People to People. In any case, that’s enough from our end. Let’s hear what Sean Kelly has to say about the project.

Left-to-right: Sean Kelly, Her Highness Alexandra Princess of Denmark, and Michael Parayno.

Vesess: In a region where many countries were affected by the December 2004 Tsunami, why did you choose Sri Lanka in particular as a base of operations?

Sean: My thinking on this wasn’t clear in the beginning. I knew I wanted to employ and train people to create items from salvaged tsunami items to help raise money. But such wreckage was, of course, available anywhere and everywhere. I originally considered Banda Aceh because of how severely destroyed it appeared in aerial video/photos. It seemed soon enough, however, that Aceh was already getting incredible attention.

Before I was too far in with my planning I heard from a former colleague, Francesca Koe, who was just beginning to work with an international team on a reef-restoration, memorial, and scuba project in Sri Lanka. After a few discussions, I decided I would join her and others in Sri Lanka to see if I could assist with raising awareness around their work. That was mainly the deciding factor.

Even before my first trip to Sri Lanka, however, I felt the plans were ideal. I knew very little about the country and figured few others in America did, either. I thought my experience as a writer would be put to good use not just in describing existing funds, but in showing the world the wonderful sides of a country I myself was just coming into contact with.

Vesess: What are the advantages of peer-to-peer, or as you put it, People-to-People communication and interaction, when compared with more traditional aid and rescue deployments?

Sean: If you are aware of network technology structures, the client/server approach involves (for example) one server passing data between multiple clients. The server has most of the power. This, to me, seems a great deal like how major aid organizations operate with regard to donors. The organization (server) holds most of the power and ultimately decides where the money goes. The donors feed the server their money but have limited decision-making powers.

The P2P model doesn’t differentiate between clients and servers. Everything is equal and the true power of a P2P system is how each “peer” works with the next. The idea struck me as a major change of approach in the business of giving aid or adopting “social change.”

In my view, the aid organization, volunteers, donors, and even the beneficiaries of aid are all equal and impact the system. In this view, the organization is extremely receptive to outside action. It is dependent upon it too. If this “network of equals” fails to act, the system collapses entirely.

This has proven to me an innovative way to view aid–at times it was Sri Lanka that contributed most to the system by way of hard work and creativity. At other times, people in Sri Lanka flagged and suddenly people in America re-focused. The P2P model allows for waves of inspiration as they come naturally in the process.

Vesess: As a technology company, it was interesting for us to see p2p being used in the offline sphere. How and why did it work in real life?

Sean: It is still a work in progress, of course. I think there is tremendous potential to the idea as a model for empowering people. But it is an ideology that is threatened by two major influences: the situation of the world as a whole and the willingness of all involved to strive for equality.

With regard to the latter I have discovered that major aid agencies often don’t adequately seek input from the people they are helping or their donors. They often give as an authority. A power over donors or beneficiaries. Donors, too, don’t seem all that interested in equality. They donate based on a level of guilt that is satisfied purely on handing over some money and then forgetting about what happens to it, rather than following it to its end. And the receivers of aid are often just that. They receive without being motivated to put something back into the system, to create their own equality.

And of course, the overall state of world health is a hugely mitigating factor. Striving for equality and social change requires effort and concentration, and the world is enduring am incredible level of suffering at this time in history. Just think of Hurricane Katrina, Darfur, Zimbabwe, the price of food, a looming worldwide recession, various sad and unfortunate wars and human rights abuses.

For the P2P model of social change to work, it needs all communities in all areas to strive for some semblance of equality.

Vesess: In your opinion, is it possible for a social system, online, or offline, to sustain itself without a distinct hierarchy of control? In other words, is p2p communication sustainable as a political system?

I think if you follow the ideology far enough down the line it is conceivable. I believe it works, bit by bit, on a small scale. But for it to be effective on a global scale would require a major change to human nature. Do we, as humans, really want to strive or equality? The increasingly large gap between haves and have-nots, the billionaires and those living off a small bag of rice, suggests we don’t. I should add that by equality I am not suggesting socialism or communism or some other political model. I’m not suggesting fascism either. Socially and politically people need guidance. There will always be gaps separating people by strengths and weaknesses. But in the world of social change, I think striving for greater equality and being open to learning both from those people who have more AND less than you has tremendous value.

In that sense, I consider myself directly in the middle. I am learning from myself and other people who, like me, are just trying to do their best. Yet I am open to learning, and have learned, incredible lessons from the donor who would hand me his/her hard earned money and the impoverished Sri Lankan who shared his King Coconut.

Vesess: What advice would you have for anyone looking to setup a similar initiative?

Sean: You said your readers are pretty tech savvy, so let’s stick with the technology world for a moment. There are thousands of small aid organizations, each often repeating the work of the next. That’s like thousands of P2P networks. There’s one clear answer to how they can be more efficient–through APIs. Developing standard ways of connecting them all together would certainly go a long way toward creating greater efficiencies between organizations. Connecting P2P Rescue to, say, a pertinent segment of Unicef efforts, a small team in Sri Lanka, a network working on parallel efforts in the Philippines, and so on, could see enormous rewards on all fronts. Shared assets and contacts. Faster mobilization. Those are some obvious examples.

The reality, however, is in my experience attempting to work with major aid organizations in and out of Sri Lanka, I continued to bump into closed (proprietary?) systems. Yes, I HAD located and met with and assessed sites needing a total of 309 homes along the southwest coast. I offered my full support and resources to cooperate in rebuilding programs. But I was turned away for a variety of reasons–political, religious, bureaucratic.

Perhaps some of the reasons were legitimate. But tell that to the family of six living under a corrugated tin roof with no bathroom facilities. The very idea behind P2P Rescue is essentially, if you have resources to spare to a place where resources are needed, you are part of the network. You don’t need to be Christian, for example. You just need to be willing to get your hands dirty for the benefit of another.

Thank you Sean, and P2P Rescue, for everything you taught us during this project. We’re sure you guys are going to do great things in Sri Lanka, and South Asia. Good luck!

Hello and welcome to another iteration of Vesess.com. We know we’ve been silent for a while, and we’re sorry, we really are. However, no posts does not necessarily mean no work. Behind the scenes, our crack team of code monkeys have been working overtime. So, as Vesess v5 launches, we’re also readying ourselves to release a brand spanking new project that’ll roxor your soxors (or boxors, depending on your persuasion).

What is it? Well, we’re not ready to reveal all just yet, but here is a wee hint to base your speculations on.

Now, on to the design. At Vesess, we’ve been through five redesigns, and think that we’ve finally found one we’ll be sticking with for a while. Simple, elegant, and easy on the eyes, Vesess V5 draws your attention to the content, which is after all, what we really want you to see. Indeed, at a time when websites are getting bigger, bulkier, and definitely more complicated, we’re proud to be going in the other direction.

According to tradition, a website should be static, and only redesigned once or twice a decade. Well, this is a myth, and an annoying one at that. We believe that a website is a dynamic entity, and that it should live, and breath and grow, just like an organisation. One year ago, we launched Vesess v4, and today we’re proud to have you with us as we take another step in to the world wild web.

Listen, create, evolve. This is what we continue to do, and as we launch v5, we’re really hyped about all new things we have planned for this next phase of Vesessination. Till we post again, the Vesess crew wishes you good speeds, and safe browsing!

It’s very convenient for us designers to think that we always know the best way to do things. Genius design, explained aptly by Dan Saffer in his excellent book, is probably a favourite method among web designers, especially in today’s web-two-point-oh environment of quickly-hacked web apps. After all, there’s only so much you can do with a web interface, and so much of it has been done before, it must be quite difficult to get anything wrong!

Yet we manage to get things horribly wrong with startling frequency. And almost always the reason could be traced back to lack of proper user input in the early stages of design. In a rare productive meeting yesterday, a Client shattered all our assumptions and injected a good dose of common sense in to our heads when he pointed out some glaring flaws in the design of a web application we were developing. In addition to saving us a lot of wasted effort and significantly improving the usability of the interface, that meeting also reminded us of the importance and usefulness of paper prototyping.

What on earth is a list?

This particular web application facilitates online recruitment, and a primary function involves an employer (the user in this instance) picking suitable candidates from a pool of applicants, and adding them to “lists”. For example, if the user wants to hire a designer, she would create a list for this purpose and add candidates to that list. In our design, the list name was independent from the actual job title: she could just create a list named “my hot list” and add people, and set the job title for that list later.

In true Getting Real fashion, we had the interfaces done first. We started explaining the above process to the client (who, fortunately, fits the role of the user perfectly), using a set of crude wireframes:

Lankitha: First, the user creates a list-

Client: Hold on, what’s a list?

L: That’s just a place for you to add candidates, like a folder in your computer-

C: Why is it called a list then? Why not folder or something?

L: Because it’s not really a folder; it’s a list of candidates

C: Er, OK…

L: So, the user creates a list-

C: Hold on, this is confusing… What on earth is a list?

It went steadily downhill from there onwards. Our first reaction was to be defensive: after all, we had put a considerable amount of effort in to designing the process and the interfaces, and before we could even get started, we were faced with a stumbling block. Surely the client was wrong?

It took a couple of minutes to realize what was happening. Paper (or, in this instance, on-screen) prototyping was already paying dividends.

Paper prototypes to the rescue

Highlighting our mistaken labeling was only the beginning. We continued with a different label and along the way found out several other problems too. At the end of the session we realized that a major overhaul of the process was called for, and a number of changes to the interfaces were in order.

Cheap yet effective

I wouldn’t call what we had a usability test: it turned out to be one by chance. But it did show how simple and cost efficient usability tests could be carried out for projects that have budget constraints and tight deadlines. People like Jakob Nielsen have been harping on this for years, but the true value of simple methods such as paper prototyping can only be understood once you do it and see the results for yourself.

Live redesigns

Another advantage of paper prototyping is you could make quick changes based on user input and see how the new interfaces are received. Since paper prototyping happens at the beginning of a project, the cost of throwing away is minimal. In fact, almost always you’ll have to throw away your first few attempts. That’s a very small price to pay for the guaranteed improvements in usability.

Towards the end of our session, the client was the one talking and sketching, and we were the ones listening. Much of the upcoming revamped design of the application would be directly from the sketches of our client rather than our genius designers.

Test early, test often

Our attempt at genius design wasn’t a total failure: a lot of other sections of the application were readily accepted, and some are already implemented. But, we’ve learnt our lesson from this meeting: the genius designer is a myth. Unless, of course, you’re Jonathan Ive.

As Steve Krug says in Don’t Make Me Think, testing one user is 100 percent better than testing none. Our first test wasn’t even intended, but surely it won’t be the last.

Welcome to Vesess.com v4. You may notice our site design, and of course, this new weblog. The online reincarnation you see was not just done for kicks (thought we admit, nitpicking the design was mad fun). It also reflects a shift in focus for us as a company.

Christened Bherunda after the mythical bird of the Ancient Kandyan tradition (as seen in the footer), the new design is finally here, and we couldn’t be more excited. As someone who’s responsible for weaving in all the different aspects of the Vesess experience in to the site’s content, it’s been a pleasure watching all the pieces of this exotic beast come together to form what can only be described as a beautiful, Web Standards friendly puzzle built with XHTML, CSS and lots of love.

With plenty of whitespace, clear fonts and soft backgrounds, Vesess.com v4 reflects who we have become. No longer a startup, not yet a multinational, we’re stepping out in to corporate no man’s land with this design. With many happy clients under our belt, we feel we’re beyond bandying words. You know how we perform, you know that we deliver. We thought we’d sit back and let our results do the talking.

Speaking of steps, we’ve also taken a leap in to the US with this launch. We found ourselves catering to so many clients from the United States that a presence in North America seemed like the next logical step.

Ever trained a code monkey? It’s a fine art, and we’ve learnt it. While we’ve been doing web and print design for a while now, we’re now also in a strong position to offer killer applications using PHP, Ruby on Rails and (I have to say it) AJAX. While Design has always been a key focus of ours, we now have the coding talent to also offer cutting edge Development services. If it’s a web application you need, let us know – we’re here for the long run. Web two-point-oh-noes and beyond.

3 years ago, the first version of Vesess.com was released. Today, we’re at v4. Bherunda is sleek, beautiful, and reflects who we are, and where we’re headed. Watch this blog for updates as we high dive in to yet another era of late nights, good tea, and the same all round awesomeness you’ve come to expect from everything that’s stamped with the kombuwa. It’s true, some things never change.