I started my blog by calling Bullshit on a fake marketing effort. (May 27, 1997) The blog post was called a diatribe by the NY Times, LA Times, Washington Post and of course C|Net. I thought it was ridiculous to fake a hacking to get publicity. These days, fakery has become an art. Create a fake video…
Performance, Speed, is probably the most important feature a system can have. It creates the impression of quality, responsiveness, friendliness and effectiveness. Whereas slow performance will do the exact opposite. It will make people feel that the system is mean, low quality and ineffective. Case in point: DirecTV I have had DirecTV for over 15…
Bottom line: (At the top) – Great service, Free and Fun. What more can I say. Trello is a small web app that lets you make lists of lists and drag them around. I use it for my design team to figure out who is working on what. A tool like JIRA is just too…
Should you let someone make a mistake? On the one hand, the answer is No. Why should you let someone run into a wall if you can help them? Doesn’t it makes sense to use your knowledge and wisdom to help people avoid doing something that clearly will end up in failure? It seems like…
I was designing something yesterday and today and couldn’t decide how a particular layout should be. So I mocked up all of the solutions I could think of. There usually aren’t that many of them. I found 4 variants that jumped to mind for this particular design. It is so much easier to judge something…
Should a product be intuitive? First let’s define what that means. From Google: Using or based on what one feels to be true even without conscious reasoning; instinctive. Ok, so common wisdom is that a product should be intuitive. However, I think this wisdom is actually an old wives tale. It’s not true. A successful product…
Not a comprehensive list, but good nonetheless: Rule #1: Say what you do in GIANT TEXT This is the most important rule of all. Does your website clearly say what your product or service is? Don’t use alot of jargon and bullshit. Get to the damn point. You should be able to tell what the…
I was thinking about the problems I try to work on each day and the time I spend on different types of tasks. Sometimes I am dealing with people and their issues. Other times, I am trying to get consensus on a decision. Lastly, there is just plain vanilla hard work that has to happen.…
I brought my car in for service today. They gave me a complimentary rental, which was the Nissan Leaf. I drove it for 10 minutes so far, so this won’t be too in-depth. Super Cool Golf Cart I didn’t realize this until today. The Nissan Leaf has NO GAS ENGINE at all. This is not…
I installed my third beta of Windows 8 on my Samsung Series 9. I am finally starting to see what Microsoft is thinking. Up until this point, I didn’t get it. It’s like Windows 7 but worse. What I realized in this last version is that it is highly intended to be used on a…
Nothing is more valuable than peace of mind. You may have everything in the world you need and want, but if you don’t have peace of mind, you will not be happy. A friend of mine recently told me about a house she is considering buying. It truly is a gorgeous house being built from…
To start, here is the list of what is new between CS5 and CS6: Content-Aware Patch Faster rendering with Liquify and Puppet Warp Some UI improvements Blur Gallery Improved Crop tool Video creation Migration/Sharing thing Adaptive Wide Angle Background Save Auto-recovery Improved auto-corrections Content Aware Move Skin tone aware masking Erodable brushes Layer search vector…
Lately, I have been working with Product Marketing. It is a fascinating department within a company. I drew a picture of where they sit in the organization. Product Marketing has the role of translating specific product features into more outbound messages. They create messaging “marchitectures” (It’s a play on words, get it?) and frameworks where…
Here is what I imagine was said, “OK, now let’s get your hair combed. Please cross your arms. Now we put the tree picture behind you. Lastly, let’s see a smile. Ok, now keep that smile….wait for it….keep smiling….almost there….oops…one more second.” What is the point of a photo like this? What does the photographer…