Often, I will have feedback for a product manager, marketer or designer when they are writing text. I find that people have a hard time taking the feedback in a very specific way. If you say it’s too serious, they assume you want to take it to the extreme. As…
Even a tool that is awesome like Slack can have bad UX sometimes. Here is a perfect example. Try to make a new channel and you get this dialog Notice the error in yellow and the text underneath. After typing in my channel name, I pressed submit and nothing happened. I didn’t…
Being the target of a bully sucks. I recently heard of someone who was being bullied on an online social site. Here are some trademark qualities of the bully: They create fake accounts to hide their identity Their comments are cruel and seek to de-humanize their victim They do it…
Quick Story There once were two school children who loved listening to their new punk music. Like all school kids, they also had alot of homework to do. The first kid asks his parent, “While I am doing my homework, may I also listen to my music?” The parent says, “No concentrate on your…
I was so annoyed with her on the Game of Thrones finale. I had to tweet about it six times. Note: I deleted my Twitter account, so the links no longer work. I could have worked on the photoshopped one a little more and made her hair tumble across Admiral…
I am planning on talking at the next Moth meeting in San Francisco. The Moth is sort of like an open mic night at a comedy club, except it doesn’t have to be funny, it’s mostly stories. They give a theme and each person is supposed to talk for 5…
Interaction Design is easy for me. I can see the big picture and architect the system with all of the right patterns. When it comes to Analytics Design, I find my inner muse drags its feet. I am not talking about designing a BI tool like Tableau or Good Data.…
So this weekend, I went to the Verizon store. I have never gone into that store and left in less than 2 hours. It’s ridiculous how long it takes to get stuff done in there. The reason I was there was to get my youngest his first phone, plus to…
Hillary Clinton should choose for her VP, Michelle Obama. Two former first ladies! Plus, Michelle is a serious customer. I have no idea who would win, but it sounds good. Despite winning the most games of any team ever, the Golden State Warriors will not be considered even in the…
Out of curiosity, I looked at the most viewed YouTube videos. The distribution looks like this: That first one is Gangnam Style. This is a song, I am very familiar with. Why is it so much higher than every other? Good question. I do not have a good answer. In fact, you get…
This should go without saying, yet apparently it doesn’t. Design Rule #13: When a user gestures or fills out a form or clicks a button or speaks their audio input or whatever…give them appropriate feedback. Of course, the word appropriate is subjective. How do you know how much feedback to…
Nothing I have done has ever gone viral. I am talking about Charlie Bit My Finger viral. (840 million views, 500k comments) Ok, maybe even something with a few thousand likes. This is the kind of viral that usually happens in numbers similar to winning the lottery. Very few have…
I hear the phrase “Fail Fast” all the time. At heart, the sentiment of this is “Get on with it.” (Which is a good thing) The problem with the word Fail is that it assumes that the effort is going to be negative. Why can’t the message be “Learn Fast“? Fail fast…
These are currently my favorite comedy acts: Flight of the Conchords I love these guys. They have live acts plus an HBO series. They are brilliant. So many different styles, each funnier than the last. Here is my favorite live show from them: Garkfunkel and Oates They are like the…