Aah man ! Could not find my white shirt, “aai (mother) do you know where I kept my white shirt..” “It’s on the extreme left pile at the bottom in your closet.” Mother replied from afar. And hallelujah it’s right there!

I think everyone in life has come across this sort of scenario & more like this. Obviously the same thing happened with me, when I was kid, but as time flew I started arranging my things. Then I did the same for my shoe rack, stationary & in another space where I started working. Eventually I became obsessed with this “arranging thing”.

At first I didn’t pay attention to this obsession, I found that when I got out of home to do my masters’. Before the master’s program I had never been to this far or in a PG or in a hostel. When we live in such cases, we get limited space to live & roam around in our room. as simple as we have our bed as our “comfort zone”. We study in bed, we work in bed, etc. we don’t get a full closet, we have to share it with someone else. The floor is not clean. Not getting enough sleep, because of the matrice. Have to struggle every time to take a blanket & cover it for the whole body, still legs are out of blanket. So many things..Ooff! Long story short, we have to adjust to everything.

Closet for all : As of my childhood memory & its impact gave me “OCD”. I arranged my clothes properly & neatly. Just like I did back home. But I had question about other stuff, for eg. toiletries which had a small shelf in the bathroom, but here at the hostel, I didn’t have it. So I have to keep those things in my closet only. So what happened is, when I got my clothes out from the pile, a shampoo bottle fell on an oil bottle & then this chronology gets continued to other five things & finally I end up ruining my closet. P.S. After all this I don’t want to wear those clothes.

Egg, is this boiled : I had a question for my breakfast, so I bought a tray of eggs & my roommate bought a boiler. Sometimes he boiled eggs for me & kept them in the same tray in which other eggs are. You would have predicted what happened next. On a beautiful day sunny morning, when I wake up, I see the note near the boiler, “I’ve boiled eggs for you” . I’m blessed. Then I take an egg from the tray & crack it, Pooff! I took the unboiled egg & ruined the morning.

I don’t want to dance : In my room we don’t have marble flooring, it’s so rough & dusty. Hence I started wearing floaters in the room. One day (This happens everyday) After taking a bath, I had to wear floaters again, because the living room floor is too rough & dusty, as I mentioned before. Before going to the bathroom I removed the floaters in the normal way, but now to wear floaters I had to turn back & try to wear them. Also I couldn’t use my hands as I was holding toiletries & clothes, so I couldn’t wear floaters effortlessly, I had to struggle for it & eventually I ended up doing dance.

As human beings we all do stupid things everyday, yet we continue to do that. Sometimes we try to find a way to do things effortlessly & implement it in our lifestyle, but we are so busy that we can’t pay attention to these things, we forget it & end up “Dancing” just like I did. As a design student, Thinking was the perks of it, hence all these situations became my pain-points & That’s how I started my journey from utility to usability.

Utility vs Usability

The difference between Utility and Usability is that Utility means to employ features that you need from a thing on the other hand Usability means how easy & pleasant the features are to use. I started to look at every small thing, In which I have to put extra effort & then discovered the way that they can provide usability. Also not only about their primary use, that’s how I started to keep things that can be easier to use next time too.

Everyone’s closet : After ruining my closet multiple times & also getting confused about what to wear, I organized my arranged closet. Initially I kept my clothes category wise, but after realizations I organized them as per priority, so I stopped getting confused about clothes. Then for other things, such as toiletries & beauty products OCD helped with organizing it. I organized them according to their sizes, so the big shampoo bottles, oil bottles will go near the wall of the closet & hence the big products got out of the way of clothes while taking them out of the pile.

Egg, this is boiled : After ruining my many mornings & also fighting with my roommate for not keeping the boiled eggs separately, I had to do something with this eggy situation. What I did is I made 2 dots on every egg & kept the marker near the tray of eggs. Now what happens is when my roommate boils eggs & keeps them in the same tray, he adds a smile on the boiled eggs with a marker. Now I know which one is boiled egg & I’m enjoying my breakfasts.

I’m not dancing : After lots of unnecessary dancing & still getting dirt on my cleaned feat. Now what I changed is, Before going to the bathroom I removed the floaters in the opposite way, that made it easy to wear floaters. After taking a bath I didn’t have to turn back & now I can wear floaters directly, without any effort. I’m not dancing now.

I’m Fully covered : Before sleeping, I had to struggle to get fully covered by a blanket. And that’s when I discovered usability in a “Blanket”. I used to fold the blanket simply & that was the reason I’m always getting frustrated before sleeping. Then I started using accordion or a zigzag fold to blanket. Now what I do is I keep my legs on the bottom end of the blanket & pull the top end with my hands & now my whole body is covered with a warm blanket. This thing gave me relief from the frustration.

In every scenario where I discovered usability, It was not that hard to discover. The other thing I noticed here is we just have to organize our things, not arrange. As both words Arranging & Organizing are same in some aspects but there is a thin line where we have to distinguish our actions & decide what to do? Arranging or Organizing. Because of this I reframed the OCD abbreviation for this type of condition, Organizing Can Do! Usability is not always about any solution or a product, it can also be implemented & practiced in our everyday things.