Warning: This is pretty much an old person rant. I recently upgraded my Alexa devices to Alexa+. I am considering throwing all of them away and replacing them with some equivalent. What’s the problem? There are many, but the one that makes me the most aggrieved is that I want…
It’s an American holiday, Thanksgiving, but I believe there is a tradition which would benefit everyone. Simply, you just say what you are thankful for. I feel in todays world, what we are upset about drowns out any positive thoughts. Here are a few things I am thankful for this…
I recently attended the Crowdstrike annual event in Europe. This year it was in Barcelona. I had never been to the city before (or any other part of Spain. I was truly impressed with the city and rank it in the top cities I could imagine living. Some of the…
I started taking photos and videos of my life and family about 25 years ago. I have them as a screensaver on this computer. It brings me happiness to look back on those photos after many years. I have over 180gigs worth of media compiled. Timeline of storage Recently, Onedrive…
Artificial intelligence is moving fast. The way people interact with it will evolve as the functionality improves. These are my predictions of where the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is going, Pre- ChatGPT It used to be called ML or machine learning. I worked at a startup a few years back that…
One of the biggest problems in AI is training. Where can you get source material for the AI to train that doesn’t break copyright laws? Google certainly has a ton of data, but I think there could a way to change the game. The hardware You need a pin that…
Over the past few years my knees have been progressively getting worse. This has nothing to do with product design, but I use my blog sometimes to just journal what has been going on in my life. Symptoms Walking down stairs in the morning hurts. Playing tennis required progressively heavy…
Honestly, I have loved my 2020 Tesla Model 3. It has been a wonderful car and way ahead of its time. If not for the buffoonery, cruelty, greed, and stupidity of their CEO (Elon Musk), I would have purchased more Tesla cars. Additionally, I would not have been in a…
This is just like 2000 and 2007. Sound familiar? It preceded the dot-com bubble and the housing bubble and it’s happening now. The hype cycle This is the way bubbles are formed and evolved. The timing is sometimes variable and not everything eventually reaches productivity. For example, the Tulip bubble…
Many designers are anxiously wondering, “will I be replaced with AI?” To jump to the conclusion, I think many designers are at risk and the job of interaction designer will change dramatically in the next 2-7 years. However, as an optimist, I think it may have a happy ending. Bubble?…
We have had a large liquid oak tree in front of our house. It grew and grew for decades. Eventually it started to break the sidewalk and encroach on the foundation of the house. Very sadly, the city decided that our glorious tree would have to go. The tree provided…
As a beta junkie, I felt compelled to install the latest OS for my iPad and new iPhone. This is a few days in. First impressions are important. Here are quick first week thoughts. Liquid Glass Obviously, this is the most noticeable change. I feel mixed about it. It is…
Fewer and fewer people host their own website using a hosting service. Designers use Framer or Webflow or EditorX or even trying the new Figma sites. Corporate websites are usually hosted in the corporate cloud like AWS or Azure or Google Cloud. Content creators have moved on from blogging to…
Two shows I really enjoyed in the last few years are Andor (a Star Wars saga) and The Penguin (a Batman spinoff). The reason for both is how they completely delivered an unexpected product. Andor In he case of Andor, it is a Star Wars movie that chronicles the time…