I love talking to groups about user experience. It is so much fun. Slideshow behind me and eyeballs in front, it is energizing and fun. I wish I could do it all day long. I have been doing my best to get better and better and the medium, but practice definetely makes perfect. I…
We have been watching the entire television series from Netflix for The Muppets. We watch it with the text “interesting tidbits” option turned on so we can read about the scene we are watching. The boys are loving it. The design of the show is brilliant. First the name, The Muppets. It’s like a puppet,…
Let’s say you are working on an application. There are hundreds of decisions every week, sometimes every day. Decisions can be big and small. How quickly should something animate? What color should the button be? Is it better 2px to the left or to the right? Decisions like these accumulate into the design of your…
Consider the spinner. There are even sites to help you build these ubiquitous items. They serve a very useful function. At heart, the spinner is an animation to take your mind off the fact that the system isn’t instantaneous. They are also there to communicate to you, “I know what you want, and I am…
It looks like my WP-Spam plugin was getting false positives and blocking some users. It “might” be that it was conflicting with my MCE Comments Plugin. So I turned off both and took this as an opportunity to try out a new spam blocker plugin. I will turn on MCE Comments again at some point…
Have you noticed these new little buttons on Google search? These are pretty interesting considering I haven’t really heard one blip from Google on the actual utility of this feature. I tried clicking on a few of them. Either it is affecting my own personal search ordering or they are keeping track. Notice how it…
I’ve been using Windows 7 on my home computer (Dell Precision 380), work (Dell Dimension 9200) and an old laptop (Dell Latitude D610). I haven’t put it in Katie’s laptop or the kids computer. Overall, there is a decent amount to like. Responsiveness is probably the number one thing. Some UI enhancements are welcome, but…
This morning I turned on one of our computers, a Dell D610 laptop. For some reason, the mouse just refused to work. The keypad wasn’t working, and the nubbin stick in the middle didn’t work either. I’m not sure what happened, but it’s like the devices just ceased to exist. However, I was able to…
I was using WIndows 7, happy as a clam, when I got a several BSOD (Blue Screens of Death). Turns out that there is some bug when the network adapter is trying to work too hard and runs out of something it needs and freaks out. (Or something like that). I updated my network card…
I made this my desktop background. It’s giving me a headache. Courtsey of Grand Illusions
This is a universal statement. It is not what you do. It is how you do it. Some examples: MP3 players were pretty popular before the iPod came out. iPod added iTunes, the spinning dial and a nicer visual design. Same for iPhone’s touch screen and wifi access. Honda had the Insight hybrid for years…
My mind is overflowing. Work has been hectic, so I haven’t been able to finish a coherent thought/blog. These are some short bits, that could have been blog entries, but didn’t quite make it. Try and imagine them fleshed out. Programmers are modern magicians making things appear as if by magic. People love software that…
Naming things is super important. People will like something or hate it based on appearances and names. See “Don’t Think of an Elephant” by Lakoff or “Blink” by Gladwell for more details, but suffice it to say, “People make decisions quickly based on very little criteria”. Microsoft is naming their next operating system “Seven” or…
What a day. We started off by learning to GeoCache. It’s basically an international treasure hunt using GPS, a website and hiding treasure around the world. Believe me when I say, there is a secret geocache within a few miles of you. There are 3 within a half-mile of me. It’s loads of fun and…