This is dating me, but I used to watch the show Good Times. It’s a comedy-drama, created by Norman Lear, about a poor family living in the projects of New York. I remember the opening credits song as happy one, upbeat and peppy. I have come to realize that I…
These are things I wish they taught in UX bootcamps and HCI colleges majors. Design is Everywhere Seriously, look around you. Everything you see, touch, taste, hear, and smell. Everything has passed through human hands in it’s construction. When you smell the gas leak, did you know that was designed…
Someone was asking me about the process of blogging. I thought about how it has changed over the last 25 years. For a long time, the process was simple and went like this: The problem recently has been that I have separated my work computer and my home computer setups.…
People sometimes confuse direction with dictation, both as an IC and a manager. One technique I often use is dueling principles. They are delivered two at a time and are contradictory. I ask the individual to use practical wisdom and judgment to make the final decision using the principles as guides. Here…
I use Beeper to consolidate all of my messaging apps. Here are the supported networks. It’s now free! (I paid, silly me) Anyway, if you want to give it a whirl, please use my refer code. It works pretty well and supports mobile, desktop, tablet, and web. The last tool…
I was recently invited to try Bluesky Social, the Twitter competitor founded by the original Twitter founder Jack Dorsey. It seems pretty early days. There is no iPad app or WordPress Plug-in. Not many influencers have accounts yet. My account here. I need to try putting up some posts and…
I just watched Oppenheimer in San Francisco in true IMAX 70mm. To cut to the chase, I have not been this annoyed by a movie in decades, first some background, so you you know where I’m coming from. I have read The Making of the Atomic Bomb and Dark Sun:…
Lately, I have seen some examples of brands being obliterated. The two that stand out are HBO and Twitter. HBO Home Box Office has been around for half a century. It existed at the dawn of the “cable” revolution. Before cable, we had only broadcast television and movies. Cable expanded…
I was thinking about the new Visio Pro goggles from Apple. I can not, for the life of me, understand why Apple thinks business people are going to strap a computer to their faces to have a zoom call. It seems ok for gaming, but nothing special to me. This…
When I am hiring a designer, I often look for things that are hard to teach. I can teach you Figma skills. I can teach you technique and vocabulary and a bunch of design details. I started compiling a list of things I value. Let’s take a look. It’s also…
As usual, I keep changing my design challenges. I just can’t help myself. This one incorporates the ideas from my GMail settings post. I actually think every new designer who is interested in B2B products should give this one a try. It makes a good portfolio piece one way or…
I think research is one of the most misunderstood and complex parts of the tech design world. There are so many angles, so many facets, and of course, so many opinions. It all adds up to a confusing hairball that is hard to talk about. I will do my best…
I was recently in Prague and noticed something about all of the sidewalks and many of the streets. They usually looked something like this: It looked pretty and had a cool pattern, but I didn’t think that much of it until I saw these guys working. They had simple tools:…
Someone recently asked me if I was data driven. I asked them “what counts as data?” Does my experience count as data? This led me to think about what drives my decisions. My conclusion was that I was judgement driven and that I generally like to hire people with good…