Siddharth Rao, co-founder of prolific Indian design firm Web Chutney, hands out a biting (and well-deserved) review of Indian publishers and their user interfaces, in a blog entry titled “Indian Publishers have the shittiest interfaces for sure“. Gotta love an Indian blog that dishes it out cleanly:

For all the silly money thats going into the online business in india, most people dont get some basics right in spite (of) truck loads of cash - Designing User friendly interfaces and navigation is one such thing.

Although he is talking specifically about Indian publishers, he also hits on an issue that is more pertinent to outsourcing: the dearth of good designers. Why is it so hard to find a talented, experienced, Indian web designer? Siddharth thinks it has to do with how easy it is to claim that you are one.

Any guy with 3500 Rs takes up a course in Galgotia Computer learning and claims to be a web designer. And anyone with a English Hons from Uthkal University becomes a content editor or even worse information architect.

Yup. This is why it’s hard to find good people. It is why the world doesn’t trust Indian design. And, it’s why Rediff looks like Yahoo leaning over the toilet after one too many Kingfishers.

Tangent: Although Siddharth’s writing is often wordy, he concisely shares my sentiments when it comes to ‘Information Architecture’:

User Interface design mission statements should be simple - give users the shit they need and give it fast.

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Nandan Nilekani can’t find enough talent over at Infosys. No one can. Employees are jumping from one firm to another, taking incremental raises and leaving projects half-done.

A Bangalore tech firm currently has a “trespassers will be recruited” sign on their front window.

The sign is hilarious. The global lack of talent? Not funny.

Somini Sengupta (my vote for NY Times MVP) tells us more in today’s paper:

As its technology companies soar to the outsourcing skies, India is bumping up against an improbable challenge. In a country once regarded as a bottomless well of low-cost, ready-to-work, English-speaking engineers, a shortage looms.

Here in San Francisco, we like to recite surveys about the poor education children receive in the US.

Many students are unable to name our Vice President. Or tell us whether Saddam or Osama were responsible for 9/11. Or, even when 9/11 happened.

Those of us who are Indian often talk about this with a sense of pride. Indian education is just far superior, we think to ourselves.

Think again:

A study commissioned by a trade group, the National Association of Software and Service Companies, or Nasscom, found only one in four engineering graduates to be employable. The rest were deficient in the required technical skills, fluency in English or ability to work in a team or deliver basic oral presentations.

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