This is The Trees by Rush on Rockband 2 with Jared (8 yrs old) on drums. Expert mode means that he is required to hit the drums exactly the same frequency as the real drummer Neil Peart. He doesn’t get it perfect at all (89% accuracy), but still I am really…
StackOverflow is a really awesome movement on the web that is revolutionizing Question & Answer forums. Experts-Exchange.com is really being left in the dust mainly because of the user experience of this new upstart. There is an elegance to the overall design that I enjoy very much. The use of…
A non-UX post. One of my kids, Ethan, ran for Student Body President of his elementary school. He was up against a dozen other kids. I don’t know the vote tallies, but I will just assume it was a victorious landslide! (Why not?) He said, when he heard the news…
There is a particular position within an engineering group that I think contributes tremendously to the overall user experience of the customer; the escalation engineer. This is the person who does the initial triage of any bug coming in from the support team. The funny thing is that most engineers…
I’ve been using the iPad for a little while now, trying to push myself in terms of using apps with multi-touch interfaces. Craig Villamor, Luke Wroblewski, Dan Willis and Jennifer Rhim have done an excellent job of documenting the gestures a user can perform. I’ve also been playing with the…
I played Softball last night for the first time in quite a while. There is a specific feeling that I get when I hit a ball well. It’s the same feeling I get when I hit a good shot in golf or shoot a difficult shot in pool or hit…
<rant> How many engineers does it take to edit CSS? It’s a trick question, engineers hate CSS. They say it’s “non-deterministic”. So who is left to mess around with the 3rd party app to skin it and make it look right? I “volunteered”. So the first thing to do is…
I don’t use Facebook all that much. I know it’s super popular, and I maintain it at the bare minimum level, but I can’t really get into it. Recently I watched an online presentation from a UX guy at Google about Social Networking. One major point really resonated with me:…
Check out this sneak peak at what Rock Band 3 will be like: A real keyboard, more realistic drums and a guitar that is a real world guitar. This takes learning music to a whole new level. I am very excited to get this for my kids. Currently, only the…
My first experience with an ongoing game was Dungeons and Dragons in the early 1980’s. There was no ending. You just played whenever you could get the right people together. You gained in levels and collected new weapons and powers. It was an addictive game. The next stage occurred with…
Question: What is the difference between the approach UX takes and the one Support takes? Each group is dedicated to making the customer happy. Of course, UX is often involved in the creation process of the product/service and support is not, but there are many times when UX is brought…
After 30 days of having ads on the right of my blog, I now have data that shows how much money I could make with Google. It was really difficult getting analogous information on the web, so I hope this is helpful to other people. I am going to disclose…
Rule #15: Consistency is good. But how do you make decisions when it’s complicated? Let’s compare some of the situations. A vs. B: No-brainer. Of course, go for something better for the situation assuming all choices are inconsistent. A vs C: Again, no-brainer. Of two equal solutions, choose the one…
Have you ever convinced yourself of a decision based on an initial reaction? Of course you have, everyone has. The more important question is: Have you ever reversed one of these decisions later when reality turned out different than you initially experienced? This is crucial to having good judgment. Sometimes…