I just realized I have been working on web stuff for 18 years. There are employees here that are 18. Ugh, that makes me feel old. Some fond memories: spacer.gif – When Netscape 2 came out and introduced the <TABLE> tag, I was thrilled. I could make something that was…
Some of my pet peeves: Kids who leave every single light in the house on when they leave for school. Wife who leaves the radio blaring at 7:30am after she leaves the house for the day. Colleagues who leave the projector on in a conference room after they leave. People…
I am recruiting for more UX Designers on my team. One thing I keep seeing, surprisingly , is that people’s LinkedIn profiles are private. If you are looking for a job, this is a bad idea. How can you tell? Open a Chrome window in Incognito mode. This will let…
Achieving Over-Achieving 1. Coming in on time Coming in early 2. Leaving on time Staying late 3. Doing what you were asked to do Doing what you were asked to do AND something you weren’t asked to do, but needed doing 4. Personally doing well Helping other people do well…
Psychology is sometimes obvious, yet people make the same psychological mistakes over and over again. Last year, the Jets acquired Tim Tebow from Denver. Although Tim is a poor quarterback, he is a “winner” and helped Denver go far in the playoffs. The Jets started the first game using Tebow…
When I was a kid, a million dollar house was a mansion. People in million dollar houses were rich, very rich. Now, a million dollar house (in the SF Bay Area) is nothing. It’s a 3 bedroom, 1,700 sq ft house in San Mateo. San Mateo is not a rich…
Still perfecting the new TV. I tried plugging in a USB 2.0 thumb drive into the USB port to watch a 4gb movie. Voila! It worked and played without flaw. The remote control worked properly. Only problem was that the thumb drive was too small to hold ALL of my…
When designing something, it is critical that you understand the domain. This means that you understand the context the design will be used and the underlying subject matter the design is used for. It includes many factors: The People Who are the people who will use your designed product? What…
Tell me, and I will forget. Show me, and I may remember. Involve me, and I will understand. – Confucius, BC 450 Sounds good, right? Confucius had a way with words. However, reality is more murky and messy. How exactly do you involve someone to achieve the best results? The…
Almost two years ago, I wrote up a UX critique of the Occupy Movement. Sadly, I was right. The movement faded away and hardly anything has changed. Banking is the same, the 99% is still the same. Corporations are still considered people with rights. Nothing substantial changed. There were some…
Design needs time to develop properly. You can whip out stuff super fast, but it probably won’t be very good. Design can have logic bugs, sub-optimal flows, unintended consequences, poor usability, unhappy customers and other nasty results. The worst case is the design hampers your business growth in the future.…
46″ is just not big enough for our living room. We moved the couch forward, but that wasn’t a satisfying answer. I wanted more screen real estate. Here are some of my findings: Buying Experience I purchased from Best Buy even though I could get it for $100 cheaper from…
User Experience is bad without User Interface is drop-downs and pop-ups and menus and icons and accordions, etc. It is important, but will be bad without Information Architecture is the arrangement of data and controls so that they are easy to find and manipulate. It is important, but will be…
I recently had to fill out a “Self-Review” for work. Evaluate yourself for the year and write down what you think. The hard part is deciding how much to stick your chest out and how much to pick on your weaknesses. If you write it too “puff-piece” then the management…