There is a new style I keep seeing around the internet. I love it. Check out MemeFaces and the The Fuuuu Comics and Membase. They crack me up. They basically make fun of the current fads (memes) and use pop culture images or line drawings to illustrate. See samples below. You can create comic strips with these…
There is nothing worse than struggling with poorly designed software. Well, OK, lot’s of things are worse, but still it sucks. It makes you feel helpless, angry, frustrated, stupid and unproductive. I feel this way when I use JIRA. It’s so complicated. Configuration is byzantine. Links don’t look like links. Plugins don’t work. It’s not…
There is an important skill in a good designer that I call Design Defense. In any design, there are choices that one must work through. There are always alternative designs, but the one you choose should have skilled and comprehensive thinking behind it. Design Defense is about explaining those choices quickly to other stakeholders. It…
It’s incredible how freeing the exercise is. Kill your sacred cows. Think about the project you work on with a colleague and say “What would the world be like if we didn’t have __________?” Some of the greatest companies killed sacred cows and then had wild success. Salesforce.com said, “What if we didn’t have on-premise…
Every time we release a big upgrade to our SaaS software, I always get this sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I feel rotten about all of the features that didn’t make the cut and all of the potential bugs that may still be lingering like little roadside bombs. I imagine users getting…
My wife needed dish-washing detergent and I found myself in a Walgreen pharmacy. I spotted the following product on the shelf. I thought for a second and smiled. Then I said the word you just said in your head when you saw the picture. I said it in exactly the same way while bobbing my head. “Nice!”…