I believe that you shouldn’t design in the chronological order the user will use the product. In other words, you don’t need to design the login screen first. You can pick a point in the middle. I call it an “anchor point”. This point serves as one of the important…
A colleague once asked me why Craigslist had become so successful with such bad design. Craigslist is a complicated company without a ton of information online. It doesn’t employee many people and has made a good deal of money. On the surface, it looks ugly. However, it has been very popular. Fascinating…
Yesterday, I was staring at my screen trying to figure out how a user would create and manage the object I conceived. I wasn’t even staring at a blank canvas. I was staring at a hole, a nothing, an absence of something. It was my job to get rid of…
When designing something new, you have to choose what it looks like and how it acts. One designer said to me, “It should be timeless and classic.” I disagreed. If you are designing something new, it should be noteworthy and contemporary. One example is the iPhone. Pick up an original…
For the better part of the last ten years, I have seen the world through the eyes of a demand generation marketer. Starting with Kelly Abner and working through thousands of others, my point of view was how to help them create more leads and nurture them through a funnel.…
Dear Mr./Mrs LinkedIn, You have the most potential and most fuckups of any site on the web. I love you and I hate you. The Good You are THE defacto social network for professionals. There are plenty of times that your user interface does the right thing. Discovery of new…
One perk of a new job is getting a new computer and monitor. I made several terrible mistakes. Here we go… The Wrong Laptop I did some research and decided on the Dell XPS 13. It has crazy high 4k resolution (3200 x 1800) and a super fast processor. Plus…
I’m reading a biography on Jim Henson. He loved his work and described how work is a crucial part of our lives. Accomplishing something is a more fulfilling feeling than the money you earn for doing it. Of course, most of us wouldn’t work at our jobs without being paid.…
Twitter and LinkedIn have very different algorithms for me. Who I follow on Twitter Hardly anyone. The stream gets to be too much for me. I can’t follow it. So I end up following just the accounts I really care about. It’s just 5. Codrops – I am in love…
I crushed it today. Yes, I’m not humble about this. No apologies. Let me rewind. I’ve been working on the information architecture for the Engagio application over the past couple of weeks. This means that I am wrapping my head around the various objects you need to do Account Based…
It’s fun to set up a new computer. I have the new Dell XPS 13 running Windows 10 (insider fast track). The resolution is a ridiculous 3200×1800. If a program doesn’t have proper scaling it looks itty bitty. So anyway, I set up my new machine. Here is a list…
I often told people that Eloqua had more functionality than Marketo. I also said it didn’t matter. Marketo beat Eloqua for a different reason. It wasn’t what you could do, but HOW you could do it. UX Rule #12: It’s not how many things you can do, it’s HOW you…
I had alot of choices of what to do next. I could have managed a large team of designers in New York, Boston, Washington DC or San Francisco. I could have pursued possibilities at large (yet exciting) companies like Google. I could have joined a new startup again. The Bay Area…
This is the second time that I am blogging that I am leaving Marketo. I joined the company, as the first non-founding employee, in 2007. Then, in 2009 I left to try a different company and progress my career. After nine months, I realized that I missed Marketo and they…