• Some Jokes: 2014

    When I’m down or frustrated… When things aren’t going my way… When I just want to give up… A good joke makes it all better.  Here are a quick set of 10 good ones: (My Favorite of the day)  What did Jay-Z call his girlfriend before they got married? Feyoncé. (2nd…

  • Car alarms are almost useless

    I was walking in the parking lot at work and a car alarm went off.  The car was about 50 feet away.  I could see someone with the door open, leaning into the driver’s side.  I looked around me and saw about 6 other people.  Each one walking nonchalantly towards…

  • Patience or Action?

    I broke the Tortoise table this morning because I was impatient.  I tried to move it without someone helping me.  I leaned a little hard on the plexiglass and it cracked.  I should have waited until tonight and had help carrying it.  I hope it’s not totally ruined. One part…

  • My Home Depot Tortoise Table Adventure

    Recently, we bought a red foot tortoise. We bought it without realizing how much space the thing really needs.  Subsequently, we bought a habitat that is too small for him. I was determined to figure out a solution to the problem.  There was a spot in our house that would make…

  • Nature or Nuture in Design

    I was looking at design work I did over 15 years ago.  Although I can see that the browser technology has improved and therefore my canvas of design has improved, I noticed that the quality of the work was not discernible from my current work.  The thinking that went into the…

  • New Host: A Small Orange

    I had been testing for a couple of weeks and the winner seems to be ASmallOrange.com. Performance I used some ping services as well as anecdotal evidence from colleagues around the world.  Orange performed consistently better. Price Orange is half the price of MediaTemple.  It’s not THAT much money, but…

  • Evaluating New Host – 2014

    For the past few years, I have been hosted on MediaTemple. However, I kept noticing that the site would get slow or even fail to load sometimes.  I kept trying customer support, but they blamed some issue that they claimed was outside their control.  I don’t know if it was…

  • Subjective and Objective

    The other day someone told me that typography was subjective.  It set me off on a rant about how it wasn’t.  I tried to explain about how typography affects reading and changes your mood.  Different fonts will create different feelings in the reader.  I tried to explain kerning, serifs and…

  • Good APIs Make Good Partners

    The art of making great APIs has become a key skill in a technology organization.  Whether it’s the protocol or the naming scheme or the functions or even the error logging, the API has a UX of it’s own.  Make a bad developer UX and you will have fewer technology…

  • The UX of the Nissan Keyless Key

    Nissan has a standard key fob system.   You don’t need to take it out of your pocket.  I love this system and find myself confused when I am in a car that requires the key to manually be inserted into the steering column. It is good, but has some…

  • UX Candidate Design Challenge – v1

    UX Candidate Design Challenge – v1 UX Candidate Design Challenge – v2 UX Candidate Design Challenge – v3 UX Candidate Design Challenge – v4 UX Candidate Design Challenge – v5 When I interview someone, I usually give a written design challenge and spend about 20 minutes on it with the…

  • Ethan and Hillary Clinton

    The Marketo 2014 Summit has grown to enormous proportions.  It’s doubled and doubled so many times that over 5,000 people packed into the Moscone Center this week.  It funny how much work goes into it and exhausts us, while at the same time fills us with enthusiasm and energy.  Our…

  • The Real World

    What happens when you die? What if all of this is meaningless? Why do parents says to their kids, “In the REAL world, blah blah”? What is the real world? Does high school matter? Should one go to college? What does success mean? Why won’t that other person like me?…

  • How to Give a Great Presentation

    I’m giving a presentation at this year’s  Marketo Summit.  The topic is how to give a great presentation.  This creates a conundrum.  If the presentation is not great, then the content will be considered suspect.  How can one trust that the lessons are solid if the presentation wasn’t awesome?  It…