You can read the news everywhere. Yesterday Steve Jobs died. When I interview people for a job, one of my stock questions is: “Who are your influences? Who shaped the way you think about doing your job?” The answer I got back most often is “Steve Jobs”. Interestingly, people who worked with him called him…
After receiving a free Apple TV from a raffle, I immediately thought of a good use for it. This might sound convoluted, but here goes: My kid plays drums. He learned and practices on Rock Band 3 using the Ion Rocker and the xBox. He also plays in School of Rock. The next show he…
There is an expression I use at work all the time. Don’t move the cheese. It comes from a book by Spencer Johnson. Cheese was put in a corner of the maze. The mice found the cheese, but one day the cheese was moved. Watch the video below for the details. In UX Design, I…
<rant class=”entertainment cheese-move”> I just received this this email from the Netflix founder. After receiving the previous message about the hikes in the prices, I lowered our subscription to the $10 a month level. After this email, I lowered it to the $5 a month level. If they send me one more stupidly conceived email, I…
In the past 2 months, I have had the pleasure of meet the leaders of StackExchange (Jeff Atwood) and Quora (Charlie Cheever). I have also been using Quora and UX.StackExchange quite frequently over the last year. They are very different services. At first, I thought about them as different web applications, specifically, different non-human things.…
For me, work and home have wildly different cadences. At work, I am in the zone. 20 places at once, solving problems for people, answering questions, counseling the grief stricken disgruntled, inspiring the new employees. Killing them softly with my song. 90% of my week is not at my desk. I am in flow most…
Remember the defragmentation tools in older versions of Windows, especially the 95-98 editions. In those systems, when the disk was needed to store information, it would put it in somewhere in the middle like the picture below. After a while, the disk would get kind of messy that way. In fact, it would yield significant…
I have been a huge fan of LinkedIn for many years. How could you not have an up to date LinkedIn profile? It seems to be a “must have” for working in today’s world. Recently LinkedIn went public. The first change I noticed was a new UI. It wasn’t pleasant for me at all. I…
Axiom: It is extremely difficult to read and listen at the same time. About 99% of all presentations make this mistake. They load up the screen with a ton of words and then the host proceeds to talk. The problem is that people must choose between reading what is on the text or listening to…
Aza Raskin has done some excellent work regarding Modal dialogs. Almost every single application in the world has modal dialogs. They are nearly ubiquitous. One of Aza’s points is that a modal with just an [OK] button is nearly useless. I usually try to think about modals as if they were a verbal conversation between…
I love my Samsung Series 9. It’s sexy, light-weight, works fast. The backlit keyboard is super handy. Everything about it making me happy, except the fact that I couldn’t connect it to the projectors in the office. Until now… I purchased the StarTech USB VGA Multi Monitor External Video Adapter for Video Card USB2VGAE2! I…
Where does your personality fit in? Confidence is good, but it can be taken too far and turn into arrogance. Humility is a virtuous trait, but taken in extreme and you don’t stand up for your design vision. It is extremely difficult to hit a bullseye. Who is humble and confident without being arrogant or…
I recently reviewed a product that I can easily describe as “having alot of features”, much more than the competition. Interestingly, the competition has 1/10th the features yet is making 4x as much money. How can this be? Why would someone want to have a product with fewer features? Seems counter-intuitive to some, but it…
Recently Netflix changed their prices, not that radically (in my opinion), but enough to make me reconsider who we are paying for the privilege of showing me a movie. Go to a Movie Theater This is the most expensive way to watch. On the plus side, you have the largest screen possible and great surround…