In the past couple of years, we have witnessed the rise in the UX Trade school. I am familiar with General Assembly and Tradecraft and have provided some mentoring to students. They typically cost updwards of $10k and last for a few months. Recently, I have heard senior designers lament that the graduates are not very…
Last night I was at a meetup for new designers. Some experienced managers and I reviewed people’s portfolios and gave them mentoring and advice. Alot of the advice I gave them reminded me a presentation I gave last year titled How to become a UX Designer. I figured I should post it. Most of my…
I actually hate patents. I think they undermine the creativity and progress of technology and startups. There is a great radio program on how software patents are awful and have lost all modern meaning they once held. (Produced by This American Life in 2011) However, when I was told that there was a bonus involved, I…
The magic triangle is used for any decision making model. See Figure below. The words are sometimes slightly different, but the meaning is the same. There is only 1 rule: In any decision, you may ONLY pick two points on the triangle. The third is deficient. If you choose Scope, it means that you have…
There are lots of opinions. However, there are opinions you should take much more seriously than others. These are the opinions of 10x people. A 10x person is someone who can do the work of 10 people. When I worked with Crash Tung, he looked me in the eye and said, “Don’t hold back!” As a…
Whenever I design business software, I imagine three stages that I need to design for. See figure below. Demo How good does it show to someone who has no idea how this thing works? In other words, how much will this feature help the sales rep. Generally, I design for the intermediate user, which doesn’t demo…