Ruminations of a restive mind !!

She: I wish we get time to do more of this. It is so refreshing.

He: Yes. Let s make a vacation planner for the next 5 years and stick to it.

She: Cant you get rid of that IT lingo at least on a cruise??!

He: You are losing focus. We were discussing about how to replicate this in the coming years!!

She: God forbid your language! You are driving me nuts!! Yeah, lets plan about it once we go home.

He: I don’t feel like going home! The damn release 3.2 is going to eat all my time :(

She: Release 3.2? What is it this time??

He: It is a web based conflict management tool. For peaceful resolution of conflicts between spouses, work teams, friends, room mates etc.

She: Heh??

He: Yeah. We identified the gap in the market for a tool like this. What basically our research found is that people are losing the ability to argue and fight gradually. Due to time and distance constraints, people tend to ignore even if there is some kind of misunderstanding with someone. So what our tool aims at is to enable people to create groups with various intimacy levels. For example, intimacy level 1 would be between Work teams and intimacy level 5 may be between spouses or very close friends. Based upon your group’s intimacy level, you would get an array of emotions to choose from.

She: So what do you do once such a group is created online?

He: Well, if the groups are in place, we have a visibility window which would indicate to people if you are online. And you presence would be indicated to them in various colour codes, each one for different kinds of moods – Euphoric, Tense, Sad, Lonely, Weird, Loving and so on. The best part over here is you can tell the tool who is behind your mood, let us say anger and that person alone would be able to see that you are angry. It would help in fast resolution as the person knows s/he is responsible for it (justifiably or unjustifiably) and hence would make at least an attempt to pacify you - which we believe is the step missing right now majorly because of distance separating people.

She: Don’t you think people would prefer just talking and clearing things face to face?

He: No. Have you observed in offices how people use IM to talk to even cubicle mates? Let us say your friend in Mumbai is mad at you for forgetting her birthday. Now you have no clue you have forgotten it and hence would have no way of knowing it otherwise. Or let us say you team mate had to give you a preliminary research report on which you had to carry out further analysis. But the guy took an unplanned leave and left you to curse him whole heartedly. Now if he could see on his mobile screen that you are seething with anger, it would definitely have an impact at least the next time he thinks of such crazy ideas. Don’t you think so??

She: I see you point. But still I don’t understand how this could help in conflict management between spouses.

They obviously know the other person is happy or upset. Don’t they?

He: Yes. But let us say, for argument sake, I am jealous of you being overly friendly with some guy. As a gentleman, I would try to dismiss such trivial thoughts from my mind. I would not be able to discuss this with you without me being turnip-faced. It would be much easier for me to just change my status to a jealous code. Only for you to see! I don’t even have to explain who the guy might be. You will immediately know right??

Or let us say you had to shop alone for the groceries because I was busy and you were very irritated about it while you were in the store. You might forget about it when I come home.. So if you could just change to “irritated” in the shop, even if you forget it, I would definitely remember and ask you about it immediately or after I come home. And we could avoid this incident happening again.

She: You know what, you are right about the groceries part :P :P! But I think you have a good idea here.. But you need net on the go right?

He: Yes. We are thinking of launching the mobile as well as the web version of it simultaneously.

She: Sounds good to me!! How did you get the idea?? We don’t even fight that often!!

He: I was watching Alaipauythey (Saathiya to the Hindi junta) the other day and I realized that 90% of the problems they had were because of not coming out with minor irritations and expectations. I felt that if such a tool could be provided, it would strengthen relationships to a great extent. I discussed with my friends and they too felt excited about it.

She: I wish I had the too, now. I would have changed my status to “Bewildered”.. You could not bother discussing it with me??

He: Haha !! You were too busy during that time and we never had a time like this to share things in open. Well, not for long.. We ll soon be one soul in two bodies!! :D