Brain … drained … Dreamforce was it’s usual crazy self this year. Marketo was a Titanium sponsor so we had great space and neat perks. For instance, we got great tickets to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers in San Francisco. Great show. In hindsight, I should have moved to the center of the stage,…
So much of UX is using logic and common sense to solve a problem. However, much of it is counter-intuitive to people. I feel like I am being Captain Obvious, but others think it is the opposite of obvious. Quite frustrating. Here is a quick top 10 examples: The more things you put on a…
I started my blog by calling Bullshit on a fake marketing effort. (May 27, 1997) The blog post was called a diatribe by the NY Times, LA Times, Washington Post and of course C|Net. I thought it was ridiculous to fake a hacking to get publicity. These days, fakery has become an art. Create a fake video…
Performance, Speed, is probably the most important feature a system can have. It creates the impression of quality, responsiveness, friendliness and effectiveness. Whereas slow performance will do the exact opposite. It will make people feel that the system is mean, low quality and ineffective. Case in point: DirecTV I have had DirecTV for over 15…
I spent last week on a cruise from NYC to Florida to the Bahamas. I had never been on a cruise before, so this was a new experience for me. I “sailed” on the Norwegian Cruise Line Gem, seen below. The Good Many times, just being different is good. A cruise is unlike a “fly to a…
Arocdnicg to rsceearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer are in the rghit pcale. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit pobelrm. Tihs is buseace the huamn mnid…
I was a charter member of America Online in 1989. My cousin and I shared an account called “Freeness”. We had tried CompuServe before that and used some dial-up BBSs, but AOL was much better. Much better at downloading free software, that is. In 1992 (college), I started playing games on the internet. They were…
Bottom line: (At the top) – Great service, Free and Fun. What more can I say. Trello is a small web app that lets you make lists of lists and drag them around. I use it for my design team to figure out who is working on what. A tool like JIRA is just too…
Sometimes you just can not look away, no matter how ridiculous it is. I just lost 5 minutes of my life to this little kid and her family. Watch and kill a few brain cells. http://tlc.howstuffworks.com/tv/here-comes-honey-boo-boo/videos There are an awful lot of people out there who are just like this. I am no saint, but man, this…
Should you let someone make a mistake? On the one hand, the answer is No. Why should you let someone run into a wall if you can help them? Doesn’t it makes sense to use your knowledge and wisdom to help people avoid doing something that clearly will end up in failure? It seems like…
I was designing something yesterday and today and couldn’t decide how a particular layout should be. So I mocked up all of the solutions I could think of. There usually aren’t that many of them. I found 4 variants that jumped to mind for this particular design. It is so much easier to judge something…
I have a personal philosophy that I thought of in high school and has been my friend for 25 years. It’s call the Karma Bank. Here is how it works: When you have things in your life that make you unhappy, you are depositing Karma into the bank. This Karma will earn interest (not very…
Ebb and Flow is the natural course of life. Sometimes you’re up and sometimes you’re down. However, these rhythms play with our psychology in a negative way. When life is throwing your curve balls you tend to think it’s just going to get worse. When things are going well, we often think something bad is going…
Should a product be intuitive? First let’s define what that means. From Google: Using or based on what one feels to be true even without conscious reasoning; instinctive. Ok, so common wisdom is that a product should be intuitive. However, I think this wisdom is actually an old wives tale. It’s not true. A successful product…