Computers have changed the way we live, think, act and behave
I recently underwent the task of redesigning my room. My previous structure has been torn down entirely and a new one has taken its place. The new room is ‘roomier’, easier to clean and according to my friends, sports an elegant look (I personally thought it looked ‘Retro’). The best part about this new room is that it was fully designed by me. No interior designer was consulted, no one gave tips. It was just me and information technology.
I remember the last time I had designed my room. It was 1994. I had gone through a few magazines and had come up with what I’d now call a haphazard recipe. The problem with that recipe had been lack of understanding of what I wanted, and mostly lack on information of what was available and what was not.
Almost a decade later, that is no longer the case. With the advent of the Internet, more information on any subject is available. Needless to say, it has made a lot of jobs easier. But I digress.
I designed my room using nothing more than the Internet and software. Before designing my room, I started out with a list of things I wanted. Easy to clean, new age, funky look were some of them. The list helped me keep focus and avoid the designs that didn’t fit the criteria. Then, I went to one of the best sites in the world for interiors, www.bbc.co.uk. Under their DIY (Do it yourself) sections, they have a list of 140 of the best styles of interior decorations available, from classical to new age to Arabic. I innovated by matching three different styles and came up with something close to what I wanted my room to look like. The problem was I didn’t have the right type of furniture to match that look.
But the problem was resolved quickly. Just by going to sites of various furniture selling companies such as www.Ikea.com, etc, I found the exact kind of furniture I wanted and if I couldn’t find it, I just mixed and matched (I also found out that these sites are the “inspirations” for many of our local furniture designing companies as well).
Now the difficulty was aligning room size, furniture, colours and designs together. I had to get the specifications exactly right, figure out what went where and ensure that everything harmonized in the process.
Since I’m not an artist, doing this on paper proved troublesome. Here a programme by the name of Visio proved invaluable. The software, amongst other things, lets you design floors, buildings, sitemaps, etc, and the ‘drag and drop’ interface (which translates into you right clicking on something you like and taking it where you want it) makes using it a dream. First, I measured my room and existing furniture that I wanted to keep and drew it on the screen (which meant taking the different icons onto the screen and ensuring that they were up to the specifics (shown in the status bar). All this took me barely 15 minutes.
Next, I experimented with my room settings, e.g. moving my bed or furniture, testing different sizes of carpets, electric lights and so forth. The insight occurred when I accidentally took my ‘cabinet’ partly outside the room wall, which gave me the idea of a ‘wall closet’ (have the entire furniture embedded in the wall). This insight allowed me the option of purchasing a surround sound stereo system that I had been wanting for sometime, but couldn’t due to lack of space. I, of course, included the stereo system in my design after downloading the specifics from the company’s websites. I even figured out how to optimize speaker placement for the best possible sound in my new room. Other options in the software made me think of where I wanted the fan, the electric sockets, switches, even the telephone.
After all this, I figured out the different sizes of furniture that I would require and also determined that a sliding door would enable me to save a lot of space, and that I couldn’t have three lamps in my room like I had initially wanted because they looked positively grotesque.
With the designs and specifications completed of what everything was going to look like (even the ceiling), I took printouts and went to our local companies and asked them to construct what I had in mind.
With the exact sizes, pictures and designs in front of them, I’m happy to report they have done a great job.
Computers have changed the way we live. They have changed the way we think, act and behave. Once all of this would have required days and a lot of money being spent on professional advice. With IT, all it took was a few hours and I had my room ready without moving a single piece of furniture or buying anything that didn’t fit in later.
Computers have changed the way we live, think, act and behave 
