User Experience in Green Seva

#ecoquests #ecoParable

2, Aug 2013 I was onboard flight from Bombay to Delhi. A lady (AL) sitting on the middle seat with few colored hair strikes, must have come to life decade or so before me 😊. My seat was window seat in the same row. I was on connecting flight coming back from Kenya. A hello with just smiles, tried starting the conversation however it just ended each time with one liners “flight is late”, “its hot here in Mumbai”, followed by an absolute silence for few minutes. There was a worry in me to miss the #ecotalks, the #regularTalks in this journey of couple of hours. So I broke the ice and started the conversation

Me: Ma’am let me guess what do you do? taken by smiley surprise

AL: Sure please. All my guesses of social worker, teacher, educator got no,

Me: I lost, pls share what do you do

AL: I am a designer, I design User experiences. The way airtel website should give an experience to the users, the way one has varied experience while entering into a bank branch in Kenya or India or China. Our last best experience becomes our minimum expectation everywhere

Me: Ma’am, can we design a user experience which can bring love for environment.

AL: Would you pls explain little more

Me: If somebody does Seva (community service) in a place of worship, there is delight, there is love in doing that service without any expectation of any form of returns. The Seva is very meditative and a therapy in itself. Some happy enzymes must have been produced in that human body. And people want to come back to do Seva to experience the same delight again and again. Can we create such a delightful experience in simple activities like closing the outflowing water tap, all that is good for the environment. If we have such a service in all the premises for worship, workship, homes, schools, factories, hotels, shops, trains…then will every premises be a place of worship?? 😊😊 ……………..

We were immersed in those talks and just dint realize that everybody had stood up and the plane was still. We had reached Delhi. It was wonderful meeting her as if met a friend after long time, however it was a too short while. While going towards baggage carousels we exchanged the mail ids. Few days later got a mail from her and go her full name. Her name is Apala Lahiri (AL) and they were doing a photobook on alternate lifestyles.

The photobook was published on org’s website ice.humanfactors and one gets to the book only after a lot of scrolling down

Disclaimer: in the above dialogue, the words and expressions may not be exact , and so are not the quotes, however essence does not differ at all 😊 ~~kp