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…
There has been alot of movement in “responsive HTML” over the last 2 years. Basically, responsive means that the page will morph as the screen gets smaller. It changes to use the available space more effectively. All the way down to the phone browser level, it changes fonts, image sizes,…
I am hiring multiple UX Designers here at Marketo. First, I do a short phone screen for candidates. Then, if they pass, a 3-4 hour interview with lots of people. Maybe this is cheating, but here are some tips to help you do well with me on the phone. Let…
sa·cred cowAn idea, custom, or institution held, esp. unreasonably, to be above criticism. In UX circles, testing is above reproach. It is a self-evident good. Anyone who doesn’t test is a moron. Test early, test often, test even more, test all the time. Killing a sacred cow is a time-honored…
I don’t like getting a ton of tweets, so I don’t follow anyone. For a while I followed Brittany from Glee. She was hilarious. My favorite tweet from her: This two shall past. — Brittany (@BrittanyGLEE) March 6, 2012 Genius. But I was bored. Too few tweets. I need a little…
I am the first non-founder employee (2007) and head of user experience at Marketo. A few days ago, I had the pleasure of experiencing the Marketo IPO ceremony in NYC at Nasdaq. It was the first company I have ever worked at that went public. It’s rare and may be…
I’ve had it with slow performance. I moved to MediaTemple Grid Service yesterday. Most of the move went smoothly, but I screwed up a little. Something went wrong with the MX Records and my mail wasn’t turned on for most of the day. Whoopsie! All fixed now. I took the…
Almost everyone with a tennis racquet has pretended it was a guitar. Tennis companies have pioneered the science of materials when it comes to making racquets incredibly stiff and light. Guitars have exactly the same requirement. Yet most guitars are made out of wood. In fact, most electric guitars are…
I really love Discover. They are always so nice to me on the phone. They have real people answer and they don’t try to sell me anything. There is a cashback bonus that goes directly into a credit in Amazon. I love it. Yesterday, I received my new card. See…
From School of Rock Song: Over the Mountain by Ozzy Osbourne April 28, 2013 Featuring Jared (11) on drums
I recently was handed a special business card. The woman actually spread out a deck of cards with about half a dozen different styles. (Imagine she said “Pick a card, any card!” like a magician). They had all different images on the back, all original illustrations. She had them in…