Buying gifts always seems difficult. I know I am not easy to get something for. I’ve been thinking about it and thought of some uncommon but good gift ideas. A cheap Ukulele You can get an acceptable one for under $50. It’s much easier to play than you might expect. You don’t need to finger…
We recently went to see Josh Johnson, one of the hosts of The Daily Show, perform his standup act. Unfortunately, I was deeply disappointed with the experience. It was a perfect storm of problems, some of which were not his fault. The Environment The show was at the Fox Oakland theater, seating over 2,800 people.…
I was thinking about the applications that companies put on your work laptop. Most serve a business function like Zoom for video conferencing or a VPN. However, I had an unpleasant thought about how AI could be used for employee surveillance. There have been services that monitor how your mouse is moving during the day.…
To me this is obvious, but somehow everyone gets this wrong. Everyone is way too verbose. Slides presentation Use speaker notes. Don’t put every word on the slide. Don’t make long bullets. Don’t over explain. If you are worried about a leave behind, make a separate document for that. For your presentation, less than 10…
There is a job role I have been experimenting with for the last couple of years called UX Producer. In my humble opinion, it has been a terrific success and has helped in countless ways. I thought it would be helpful to share the concept and how it works. Mission of UX Producers UX Producers…
Warning: This is pretty much an old person rant. I recently upgraded my Alexa devices to Alexa+. I am considering throwing all of them away and replacing them with some equivalent. What’s the problem? There are many, but the one that makes me the most aggrieved is that I want it to be more concise.…
It’s an American holiday, Thanksgiving, but I believe there is a tradition which would benefit everyone. Simply, you just say what you are thankful for. I feel in todays world, what we are upset about drowns out any positive thoughts. Here are a few things I am thankful for this year. Good music I’m thankful…
I recently attended the Crowdstrike annual event in Europe. This year it was in Barcelona. I had never been to the city before (or any other part of Spain. I was truly impressed with the city and rank it in the top cities I could imagine living. Some of the highlights below. Lots of pictures!…
Over the past few years my knees have been progressively getting worse. This has nothing to do with product design, but I use my blog sometimes to just journal what has been going on in my life. Symptoms Walking down stairs in the morning hurts. Playing tennis required progressively heavy knee braces or within a…
Honestly, I have loved my 2020 Tesla Model 3. It has been a wonderful car and way ahead of its time. If not for the buffoonery, cruelty, greed, and stupidity of their CEO (Elon Musk), I would have purchased more Tesla cars. Additionally, I would not have been in a hurry to get a new…
This is just like 2000 and 2007. Sound familiar? It preceded the dot-com bubble and the housing bubble and it’s happening now. The hype cycle This is the way bubbles are formed and evolved. The timing is sometimes variable and not everything eventually reaches productivity. For example, the Tulip bubble of 1634 was not a…
Many designers are anxiously wondering, “will I be replaced with AI?” To jump to the conclusion, I think many designers are at risk and the job of interaction designer will change dramatically in the next 2-7 years. However, as an optimist, I think it may have a happy ending. Bubble? Sure, we are in a…
We have had a large liquid oak tree in front of our house. It grew and grew for decades. Eventually it started to break the sidewalk and encroach on the foundation of the house. Very sadly, the city decided that our glorious tree would have to go. The tree provided excellent shade to the house…
Fewer and fewer people host their own website using a hosting service. Designers use Framer or Webflow or EditorX or even trying the new Figma sites. Corporate websites are usually hosted in the corporate cloud like AWS or Azure or Google Cloud. Content creators have moved on from blogging to either short form text like…