Are you a fledgling designer? Just graduated from General Assembly or CMU? Well, I am hiring. But wait, I don’t want to hire you yet. You don’t know what you are doing. Here is a challenge to help you get off the starting blocks. First, Redesign your website. Check out these awesome UX portfolios. Or…
I just upgraded to the new WordPress 4.1 with a new theme Twenty Fifteen. I think it looks nice, but more importantly, it is the most responsive theme I have ever used. It has many breakpoints and changes shape as the browser gets smaller. (Try it out) However, on very large resolutions (1920×1080 on my…
I was in a discussion with a young designer about whether serif or sans serif is easier to read. I was about to go over the pros and cons, but then I found this info-graphic on serif vs sans-serif. Brilliant. I’ve made a copy of the graphic below. I think it covers the subject completely.…
When we first designed and built Marketo, we started out with a client-side framework (ExtJS) that was cutting edge and awesome. Version 0.33 alpha. How cutting edge is that!? Then over time, it because 2.0, and then 3.0 and then 4.0 and now it’s up to 5.1. It’s no longer cutting edge. It’s a great…
This year, we launched a Marketing Calendar. This was one of the most surprising designs I have ever been involved with. I thought (in the beginning) the calendars were easy. Just copy Outlook, how hard can it be?! It turns out that Calendars are extremely nuanced and complicated. They have been honed over the past…
I had previously posted my UX Designer interview challenge. I just wrote a new version, so I figured I could post the one I was using here. It is a continuation of the previous challenge. Scenario A famous comedian is the sponsor of the project. He is working with 4 other comedians to rate and…
A certification is a promise from the company to the management of the customer. It means that if you (the customer) hires someone who passes the certification that we (the company) promise that they will be competent and even skilled at working the product. Certifications are sometimes done well and sometimes done poorly. One way…
We are tantalizingly close to having a car experience that is more akin to a train, bus or plane. We get in, we sit and read and when we arrive we get out. All we need is self-driving cars. I really want this world to exist, but there are many hurdles to work through. For…
In the corporate body, there are pressure points. These pressure points can yield disproportionate gain (or pain) throughout the enterprise. Corporate Acupuncture is the art of finding those pressure points and applying some UX love to generate big results. Sometimes, the pressure points are due to individuals. A great individual contributor can be leveraged on…
I was at an enterprise designer meetup last night. An interesting topic came up which was, “What are your enterprise design principles?” I thought I had collected quite a few over the years that have helped me design. Here they are with very short explanations. 1. Don’t move the cheese If a user knows how to…
I just finished reading Practical Wisdom by Barry Schwartz. (Author of the great book The Paradox of Choice. – not to be confused with The Wisdom of Crowds, also a great book.) Practical Wisdom is a decent book, but more importantly, it points the way to design our ideal civilization. The book points out how incentives are…
I’ve been working on a new system for help articles at work. We decided to try a Confluence Wiki from Atlassian. I have to say, I have been pleasantly surprised by the excellent UX. They clearly have poured a decent amount of love into this thing. Here are some thoughts that come to mind: Mobile…
I’ve got alot of different kinds of computers in my house. A desktop from dell, a little Intel NUC, a Mac Mini, iPads, xBoxes, etc etc. I am not generally a Mac user, but I help my kid with his Mac Mini. He (11 yrs old) is a musician and plays drums and base guitar.…
I heard a phrase: People don’t buy shovels, they buy holes. It’s taken me a very long while to respond to this because it sounds so good. It rolls off the tongue and has an unexpected, logical quality. It seems right, doesn’t it. The only problem is that it is completely, utterly, 100% wrong. People…