When I was a kid, a million dollar house was a mansion. People in million dollar houses were rich, very rich. Now, a million dollar house (in the SF Bay Area) is nothing. It’s a 3 bedroom, 1,700 sq ft house in San Mateo. San Mateo is not a rich neighborhood at all. Someone owning…
Still perfecting the new TV. I tried plugging in a USB 2.0 thumb drive into the USB port to watch a 4gb movie. Voila! It worked and played without flaw. The remote control worked properly. Only problem was that the thumb drive was too small to hold ALL of my movies. So I upped the…
When designing something, it is critical that you understand the domain. This means that you understand the context the design will be used and the underlying subject matter the design is used for. It includes many factors: The People Who are the people who will use your designed product? What are their personalities? What motivates…
Tell me, and I will forget. Show me, and I may remember. Involve me, and I will understand. – Confucius, BC 450 Sounds good, right? Confucius had a way with words. However, reality is more murky and messy. How exactly do you involve someone to achieve the best results? The goals are pretty straight-forward: (I…
Almost two years ago, I wrote up a UX critique of the Occupy Movement. Sadly, I was right. The movement faded away and hardly anything has changed. Banking is the same, the 99% is still the same. Corporations are still considered people with rights. Nothing substantial changed. There were some conversations, but no laws. On…
Design needs time to develop properly. You can whip out stuff super fast, but it probably won’t be very good. Design can have logic bugs, sub-optimal flows, unintended consequences, poor usability, unhappy customers and other nasty results. The worst case is the design hampers your business growth in the future. What do all of the…