It’s been getting harder and harder to get dressed up for Halloween. It used to be so easy, I looked forward to dressing up each year. I think it’s because the kids are getting older and don’t want to trick or treat with me anymore. Maybe it’s just because I am getting old and my…
Anna Zeman, designer extraordinaire, came up with this idea. I hated it at first, but it is somehow growing on me. Bat Face This is the face you make when you are talking to someone and they say something that is either stupid, offensive or ridiculous. You don’t want to fight with them, so you…
Everything has an amount that is “just right”. It’s often called the Goldilocks principle. Example: These planets either have too much greenhouse effect or too little to be able to sustain life as we know it. The differences between the three planets have been termed the “Goldilocks Principle” (Venus is too hot, Mars is too…
I’ve officially switched my allegiance from IconExperience to Icons8. IconExperience They did a great job for many years of having a comprehensive iconset in a wonderful system where you could find what you wanted. However, after the V collection, the next bunch of sets were pretty low quality. The O-collection is too chunky and ugly,…
In many organizations, the product managers (PM) are the ones who define the “solution” for their project. They create wireframes and detailed UI requirements. They basically put the product designers (UX) into the role of “make it look pretty”. UI Graphic design is important, but it is not User Experience Design. What is User Experience…
I’ve heard the expression from executives, “Let’s slay this dragon once and for all.” What they mean is “We have had complaints from customers on [topic x]. Let’s do a project that makes all of those complaints go away. The dragon in this metaphor is the complaints that customers have. I think this is the…
As a designer, I have always appreciated tight integrations. The fact that I can copy a bunch of cells in Excel and paste them into PowerPoint is just awesome. When designing Marketo, I thought of the solution as one small city. There was the neighborhood of making landing pages and the adjacent neighborhood of forms,…
Sometimes, you need to reinvent something. I’ve done it several times in my career and have successful. However sometimes, you just gotta leave it alone. Microsoft just released a new product called Sway. (I’ll review it later maybe). Anyway, they felt the need to reinvent this. Bold is no longer B. It’s E. E for…
I try to buy nice shirts from designers like Zachary Prell, sometimes Canali. I used to be a Men’s Wearhouse sort of guy, but once I tried on a shirt that fit me well, I couldn’t turn back. These shirts generally can not be washed in the washer/drier at home. They usually need to be…
I know that many designers love their Sketch. It’s a good tool and is making Adobe scramble. However, when it comes to UX for enterprise applications, I still believe storyboards are the way to go. Invision is a great tool, but I still think storyboards are better than clickable prototypes. The best tool for Storyboards?…
I was watching some clips of the debate and Bernie Sander’s voice kept poking me in the brain. It sounded exactly like someone else. As if Bernie was doing an impression. Then it hit me. He was doing an impression of Larry David. Check out these two clips. The first is Larry David on 60…
Once I had a job as a project manager. I was terrible at it and eventually was fired. The job was designed for someone with alot of process in mind. This is clearly not me. Remember my personality results? For a project manager, you want high EXAMINE. Obviously, mine is not suited for that job.…
Someone just told me they were Vitamin D deficient. I immediately Googled “How to get vitamin D”. (This is what I do, don’t ask.) What is shocking to me was the first link. It’s the Vitamin D Council. There is a whole non-profit, a council dedicated to Vitamin D. You get Vitamin D from sunlight…
About Face 4 by Alan Cooper has just been released. I first read the initial version and it was a revelation to me. Although Cooper’s ego saturates much of the text, the technique and craft of interaction was undeniably accurate. My own design style is heavily influenced by this book, as well as his other…