Tag: UX
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HCI Program Wishlist
These are things I wish they taught in UX bootcamps and HCI colleges majors. Design is Everywhere Seriously, look around you. Everything you see, touch, taste, hear, and smell. Everything has passed through human hands in it’s construction. When you smell the gas leak, did you know that was designed on purpose because natural gas…
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The Creative Rhythm
Someone was asking me about the process of blogging. I thought about how it has changed over the last 25 years. For a long time, the process was simple and went like this: The problem recently has been that I have separated my work computer and my home computer setups. This is annoying, but realistically,…
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Dueling Principles
People sometimes confuse direction with dictation, both as an IC and a manager. One technique I often use is dueling principles. They are delivered two at a time and are contradictory. I ask the individual to use practical wisdom and judgment to make the final decision using the principles as guides. Here some examples I have used…
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Bluesky Social
I was recently invited to try Bluesky Social, the Twitter competitor founded by the original Twitter founder Jack Dorsey. It seems pretty early days. There is no iPad app or WordPress Plug-in. Not many influencers have accounts yet. My account here. I need to try putting up some posts and see if it devolves into…
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Qualities of a great designer
When I am hiring a designer, I often look for things that are hard to teach. I can teach you Figma skills. I can teach you technique and vocabulary and a bunch of design details. I started compiling a list of things I value. Let’s take a look. It’s also interesting to think how many…
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UX Design Challenge v7
As usual, I keep changing my design challenges. I just can’t help myself. This one incorporates the ideas from my GMail settings post. I actually think every new designer who is interested in B2B products should give this one a try. It makes a good portfolio piece one way or the other. Effort estimate: 1-2…
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Hand Crafted
I was recently in Prague and noticed something about all of the sidewalks and many of the streets. They usually looked something like this: It looked pretty and had a cool pattern, but I didn’t think that much of it until I saw these guys working. They had simple tools: bricks, shovels and hammers. They…
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Judgement Driven
Someone recently asked me if I was data driven. I asked them “what counts as data?” Does my experience count as data? This led me to think about what drives my decisions. My conclusion was that I was judgement driven and that I generally like to hire people with good judgement. Here is the basic…
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UX Design Challenge v6
I am building design and docs teams right now in Prague and Bangalore as well as on-boarding a large team in Tel Aviv. Because of time zones and the poor location of California, I am forced to change my normal process. For certain candidates, I am pointing them to this post and asking them to…
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GMail Settings
Have you looked at GMail settings recently? I noticed they haven’t changed in about 20 years. Now take a look at Chrome settings. It’s pretty clear that Google has a pattern using Material Design to make these kinds of settings. The Chrome example look just good. So why in the world haven’t they updated the…
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Designer Interview Questions 2022
I just retired the zoom interview technique I have been using for the past few months. You might hate it, but it was fun and had some real benefits. Decide for yourself. It seems long to read, but it went quick in a 30 min interview. I ask the candidate to imagine going to a…
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Beyond the User
Hot TakeThe user does not come first. The user is not the center of design. The user is one of many factors in a good product. Glen Lipka, 2023 I have never liked the terms User-Driven, Data-Driven, and User-Centered. I think it fundamentally weakens the design team and devalues creativity, innovation, inspiration, risk-taking, and experience.…
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Will Silicon Valley Survive?
I live in “Silicon Valley” halfway between San Francisco and San Jose. I moved to the Bay Area in 2002 and have loved it ever since. My first impression was that “everyone here loves technology like I do!” and that has stuck with me for 2 decades. However, I see a trend now that is…
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Portfolio About Page Logic
I feel like most designers put very little design thinking into their own design portfolio. This is weird, right? I mean, there is literally only one website in the whole world that you get to control 100%. No engineers, no product managers, no executives or sales people. Its just you. Why in the world would…