Two things I am good at are Pool and Tennis. Each requires a specific piece of equipment that makes a big difference in how you play. If someone asked me to help them buy a pool cue or a tennis racket, I would be able to explain to them the subtle differences and help evaluate…
First impressions are important. I was asked by someone at Generic Frame to look at their prototyping tool, so I wrote down the impressions I got after using it for about a half hour. Warning 1: I didn’t like it much. Warning 2: I don’t like prototyping tools in general. (Axure, JustinMind) Here is the…
Say the name of the product depicted below. Every word makes me salivate. Oh my god, I want to shove 20 of these in my mouth and make my blood sugar spike. It’s not the name of a product, it’s a list of yummy ingredients. Each cookie probably shortens my life by 4 hours, but who…
I have no idea what I was thinking. Why did I install Windows 8 on my Samsung Series 9 laptop? It was running great. I was happy. Now, I have this ridiculous operating system with its horrible Metro UI. Can you tell I don’t like it? The start menu disappeared. All these tiles showed up and none…
A few years ago, my wife gave me a Ukulele as a birthday present. Although I had never played an instrument before, I found the ukulele delightful and easy to play. It’s soothing and fun and easy to carry around. People love hearing it. Lately, I have been giving it to my son Ethan to…
Video of my presentation from Wakanday JS Everywhere conference 2011. [vimeo]http://vimeo.com/32621476[/vimeo]
I hate when people are complainers, but not problem solvers. If there is a problem, then let’s figure out how to make it better. It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just needs to be better. Football analogy: 2 minutes left, down by 5. Don’t throw the bomb. Just move the chains. Throw for 5-10…
The difference between a task completing or not is often about knowing the right button/gesture to tell the system what you want. My son (6th grade) has been writing more and more reports on the computer using Microsoft Word and PowerPoint. School reports are exactly what MS Word was designed to handle. However, the UI…
It’s always so hard to make the leap. Most people defend the status quo. It’s scary! Who wants to leap out into the unknown and risk failing? What if you miss the mark and fall/fail? (I never noticed how similar those two words are.) However, the reality is: If you want “good stuff” you have…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuIJRsAuCHQ Let’s just assume you don’t have sound because the music was pure ridiculousness. I don’t want to get hung up on the cheesiness of the video. I want to focus on the unicycle itself. Here is my description of the features: Like a unicycle, but requiring less skill. No pedals or need to know how…
Not any bathroom sink; this is the sink in the bathroom at my work. I use it several times a day. Take a look. Notice where the water comes out. It’s all the way to the left edge. Notice the size of the sink. 90% of the sink is wasted space. All of the water…
I was invited over the weekend to speak at the Wakanday 2011 conference title JS.Everywhere. It was a fascinating gathering because the emphasis was not on JavaScript in a browser, but rather on the server. 4D is the company sponsoring the event. They have had a database server product for decades and are trying to…
This is how Quora notifications look if you have a bunch. To me, this is borderline criminal UX design. Why in the world would you repeat the question so many times in a row? The information grid is pretty straight-forward: Who commented, edited or answered questions that I follow and who voted me up or…
I have never had an office with a door. At Koko (web development company I ran between 1995-2002) we all sat in an open space. At Remend, it was an open space. At Intuit, it was a life-sucking claustrophobic cubicle with 6 foot walls. At Marketo, I have always insisted on sitting out in the…