As a designer, I have always appreciated tight integrations. The fact that I can copy a bunch of cells in Excel and paste them into PowerPoint is just awesome. When designing Marketo, I thought of the solution as one small city. There was the neighborhood of making landing pages and the adjacent neighborhood of forms,…
Sometimes, you need to reinvent something. I’ve done it several times in my career and have successful. However sometimes, you just gotta leave it alone. Microsoft just released a new product called Sway. (I’ll review it later maybe). Anyway, they felt the need to reinvent this. Bold is no longer B. It’s E. E for…
I know that many designers love their Sketch. It’s a good tool and is making Adobe scramble. However, when it comes to UX for enterprise applications, I still believe storyboards are the way to go. Invision is a great tool, but I still think storyboards are better than clickable prototypes. The best tool for Storyboards?…
About Face 4 by Alan Cooper has just been released. I first read the initial version and it was a revelation to me. Although Cooper’s ego saturates much of the text, the technique and craft of interaction was undeniably accurate. My own design style is heavily influenced by this book, as well as his other…
I get alot of spam, but this one really caught my attention. It has great copy writing and is funny. I don’t want the product, but I figured I should share it anyway just for good technique. The tip here is avoid being too “professional”. Be creative and unique. Here is the email copy: Glen,…
Should your designs be trendy? It’s kind of a loaded question. If you follow the trends then you are being a design leader. However, if you don’t follow the trends, you are at risk of being left behind as irrelevant. Not everyone can make the new, cool thing. So the question remains, how much should…
This morning, a designer and I had an idea. It wasn’t a big idea. In fact it was fairly unimportant and related to graphic design. However, the size of the idea has nothing to do with the feeling you have for it. People love their ideas regardless of whether they have merit or are complete…
I’m often asked how I measure success or develop career growth for designers. I’ve made this map to help guide. Use this to know if you are in the right title and what a promotion entails. Also use this in recruiting to put someone at the right level when they join. I hope its helpful.…
I was helping someone set up a password on Intuit.com. When they asked for a password, they presented this visual clue. Notice where it says NO SPACES. That is just lazy programming. Spaces are a completely valid character for a password. There was no designer or product manager who said, “No, don’t let them put…
I’ve been using Windows 10 for a couple of months now. I have been a beta tester of every windows operating system since Windows 95. I am not an Apple Fanboy by any stretch. I have been a fan of Microsoft products include Office for decades. I think I can be fairly objective here. In…
I just got back from a vacation to Maui, Hawaii. It was the first trip that I had taken without my extended family (siblings, parents, cousins, etc) in decades. I haven’t traveled much, so this was a new adventure. I went just with my atomic family (wife/kids). Here is a quick run down of some…
For the last few years, I have been working on the hardest/longest project of my career. http://docs.marketo.com – The Marketo User Manual A few years back, I did a series of interviews of our customers. Specifically, I spoke to customers who thought the product was “too hard”. Turns out that part of the problem was the the…
I love my Asus Zenwatch and use it all the time. The best use case: My phone (Nexus 6) rings in my pocket. It buzzes my wrist and I look at the watch. I see a picture of the caller and their name. I can swipe left (answer) or right (voicemail). This simple interaction is…
I see it constantly. It’s a bad practice and I wish people would stop. Stahp! Bad: See our great content about marketing here. Better: See our great content about marketing. Reasons Google uses the link text as a hint to good keywords someone would use to find it. The word “here” isn’t something people search for.…