Truth: Most products are not that good. I don’t blame terrible designers or unreasonable managers for this. The bottom line is: It is incredibly difficult to develop a product that is great. I mocked up a diagram to help explain. Imagine you are in space, with a basketball. You are floating in one direction in…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuIJRsAuCHQ Let’s just assume you don’t have sound because the music was pure ridiculousness. I don’t want to get hung up on the cheesiness of the video. I want to focus on the unicycle itself. Here is my description of the features: Like a unicycle, but requiring less skill. No pedals or need to know how…
Charts are always a superior way of delivering key information and hopefully to elicit and emotional response. If you can get your audience to understand the data on an emotional level, you are much more likely to get them to act. Here are a dozen interesting charts on wealth distribution in the US. 1. 2. …
Q: Can the font, Comic Sans ever look good? A: Comic Sans is meant to be used for comic book circumstances. Normally, these are ALL CAPS. Looks fine in that circumstance. Like this:
Halloween increases your positive Karma. It is a proven fact. I read that somewhere. It fills your soul with sunshine and lollypops. I strongly suggest that you get dressed up each year. Here are some of the types of costumes you get: The Full Monty This is when someone spends a ton of time, energy…
My hands are not small. My pockets are not small. I want a bigger phone. I don’t want to hold an iPad up to my head, but I do want a bigger phone. Here it is: The Samsung Galaxy Note. Apparently it will be available in Europe first this weekend. However, I would like it…
Disclaimer: I am a progressive. I believe taxes should be raised for people making more than 750k per year and defense spending should be cut in half and the National Endowment for the Arts funding should be increased 100x. With that disclaimer out of the way I have to say that I do not understand…
Not any bathroom sink; this is the sink in the bathroom at my work. I use it several times a day. Take a look. Notice where the water comes out. It’s all the way to the left edge. Notice the size of the sink. 90% of the sink is wasted space. All of the water…
I was invited over the weekend to speak at the Wakanday 2011 conference title JS.Everywhere. It was a fascinating gathering because the emphasis was not on JavaScript in a browser, but rather on the server. 4D is the company sponsoring the event. They have had a database server product for decades and are trying to…
This is how Quora notifications look if you have a bunch. To me, this is borderline criminal UX design. Why in the world would you repeat the question so many times in a row? The information grid is pretty straight-forward: Who commented, edited or answered questions that I follow and who voted me up or…
I have never had an office with a door. At Koko (web development company I ran between 1995-2002) we all sat in an open space. At Remend, it was an open space. At Intuit, it was a life-sucking claustrophobic cubicle with 6 foot walls. At Marketo, I have always insisted on sitting out in the…
You can read the news everywhere. Yesterday Steve Jobs died. When I interview people for a job, one of my stock questions is: “Who are your influences? Who shaped the way you think about doing your job?” The answer I got back most often is “Steve Jobs”. Interestingly, people who worked with him called him…
After receiving a free Apple TV from a raffle, I immediately thought of a good use for it. This might sound convoluted, but here goes: My kid plays drums. He learned and practices on Rock Band 3 using the Ion Rocker and the xBox. He also plays in School of Rock. The next show he…
At Dreamforce, lots of booths ask you to drop in their business card to win a prize. Of course, I did this at plenty of places. Lucky me, I won an Apple TV from Akamai Technologies. One piece of oddness: In the letter to me, they completely got my title wrong. I dropped my card…