Twitter and LinkedIn have very different algorithms for me. Who I follow on Twitter Hardly anyone. The stream gets to be too much for me. I can’t follow it. So I end up following just the accounts I really care about. It’s just 5. Codrops – I am in love with the effects on this…
I crushed it today. Yes, I’m not humble about this. No apologies. Let me rewind. I’ve been working on the information architecture for the Engagio application over the past couple of weeks. This means that I am wrapping my head around the various objects you need to do Account Based Marketing. Think about a random…
It’s fun to set up a new computer. I have the new Dell XPS 13 running Windows 10 (insider fast track). The resolution is a ridiculous 3200×1800. If a program doesn’t have proper scaling it looks itty bitty. So anyway, I set up my new machine. Here is a list of my desktop software: (doesn’t…
I often told people that Eloqua had more functionality than Marketo. I also said it didn’t matter. Marketo beat Eloqua for a different reason. It wasn’t what you could do, but HOW you could do it. UX Rule #12: It’s not how many things you can do, it’s HOW you can get them done. It’s…
I had alot of choices of what to do next. I could have managed a large team of designers in New York, Boston, Washington DC or San Francisco. I could have pursued possibilities at large (yet exciting) companies like Google. I could have joined a new startup again. The Bay Area is just so awesome, I…
This is the second time that I am blogging that I am leaving Marketo. I joined the company, as the first non-founding employee, in 2007. Then, in 2009 I left to try a different company and progress my career. After nine months, I realized that I missed Marketo and they missed me. So I rejoined…
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…