“When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the…
I wish I had written the UX Handbook I wanted to a few years ago. It’s harder than I thought it would be. Anyway, here is an outline of how I would approach a section of the book. Steps to design something: 1. Research & Problem definition This is not…
One thing I train designers to do is to use realistic examples in all designs. Never use lorem ipsum for text. Never put in nonsensical data for a chart. Always try to make things as realistic as possible. “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.” Albert…
So it’s been over 2 years of using a Macbook Pro for work. I also have an Android phone, an iPad tablet, and a Windows desktop for the family. I am an avid beta tester, so literally every one of these is on the beta version. Here are some quick…
I believe in work rituals. They create a sense of normalcy in the messy work of creating a product. One of the reasons I like Scrum is that it has lots of good rituals like Sprint meetings, the planning game, and retrospectives. One thing I do not like about Scrum…
How many people do you introduce per year? For me, it’s about a dozen introductions. Introductions are much more powerful than a cold call to someone you want to meet. When a trusted third party introduces you, you are much more likely to connect with the other person. In business,…
I’ve been thinking recently about how product companies are built from zero to initial launch. Everyone loves to focus on success stories, but most startups still make many of the same mistakes. I would generalize it and say they sell out their future to gain a short term benefit. Here…
Problem Statement: As a non-programmer, I just want to select a subset of people from a database. However, when I try it’s either really hard requiring SQL editing, or the UI is so difficult that is makes me want to puke. Therefore, I will just not do it very often.…
Every once in a while, I upend my family room and change how everything works. My family loves it. (not) Well, guess what, it’s time again. I currently have a lot of services. Netflix, Hulu, Prime, HBOMax, Disney+, and YouTube TV. All of this streams through a Roku sound bar.…
Sometimes I just shake my head in dismay. Today, I was watching the Australia Open on television. In the back of the court is a giant logo that looks like this. My son and I looked at it and said, “What company is that? KN? Maybe the n is backwards.…
About 15 years ago, I read a book recommended by a mentor at Intuit (Bill Mirbach) called When Prophecy Fails by Leon Festinger. (Wikipedia Article) The book, published in 1956, studies a small UFO religion in Chicago called the Seekers that believed in an imminent apocalypse and what happened when…
Over the past 25 years, there have been many forums that I have engaged in. This week Figma just launched a new forum for their users. It made me think I should note the previous communities I have been a part of. I had blogged about Q&A in 2008 and…
I used to doodle all the time. My brother just sent me an old notebook he found. I had this running series of comics about the Assumptions. Creatures from the planet Assump. Get it? Anyway, here is a good sampling of them. Anyway, they aren’t great pieces of art, but…
I’ve been managing people on and off for 25 years now. It’s hard to tell how I have evolved, but I am sure that I’ve changed some over the years. There are certain principles that I think about as a manager that have stayed with me since the beginning and…