SME stands for Subject Matter Expert. It means that you have extensive experience doing tasks in a particular field. The question is “If you are looking for a designer, should you try to find one that is also a SME for the target domain?” The answer may seem counter-intuitive, but experience doesn’t help, it usually…
There is a technique I use alot when thinking about the architecture of a SaaS product. It’s called Main Street. It comes from when I visited Disney Land. The technique makes an analogy of building a product to designing a theme park. You have to decide where everything lives and how the roads interact with each other.…
What is the best method for a designer? Storyboards or Prototypes? Storyboards These are used to tell a specific story. You can not click wherever you want. It’s just a series of screens in a chronological order. I have used Visio, PowerPoint, Photoshop, Whiteboard, Paper and Balsamiq to make these in the past. They are…
When do you give up? Let’s put that another way, When do you realize you made a mistake and try something different? Yes, that sounds much better. Yet, it’s the same thing. I have seen so many companies refuse to acknowledge the truth of a bad situation and stop the madness. When something is going…
I saw an interesting question on UXExchange about product testimonials. Are they good or useless? We all know that referrals are tremendously important to people in their decision making. An advertisement for a new restaurant is worth a fraction of a recommendation from someone about the restaurant. This is why Yelp and Amazon recommendations exist. So it…
Values are things that help define you as a company or person. I think it’s important to list them out and periodically review them. I just updated mine. Here they are: Transparency Take a look at this blog post by Balsamiq. I can’t believe how transparent he is about his company. I actually am not suggesting…
What is the likelihood of raising your hand in class, or in a meeting, or at a conference? Some people raise their hands all the time. I have this policy where I try to say absolutely nothing at all in meetings. However, I have such a big mouth, I inevitably can’t hold back and comments pour out…
After trying JustinMind Prototyper 3.0, I felt that it definitely was time to move the designs I have been working on to the next level of fidelity. We needed to be producing realistic looking prototypes for sales and research uses as well as deliverables for engineering. This is similar to when, at Marketo, I changed from PowerPoint…
This weekend I had the opportunity to use JustinMind Prototyper a little more. I had previously reviewed it for initial impressions. This was a real project I was using it for and I got at least 6 hours in of real-world usage. Here are my findings: The first thing I noticed is that the application is kinda…
There is a ton of software out there that is SaaS (Software as a Service). This doesn’t mean at all that it is easy to use. What it means is that there is no CDs or servers to install. You go to a website and login. Example of Managed Service SaaS: Eloqua. Eloqua was in…
I have seen this effect first hand my whole life. Some examples: I tried to convince my parents that homework was stupid. The more I tried to convince, the most entrenched they became. I tried to get a girl to love me. The more I loved her, the less she loved me. My cousin treated…
From Wikipedia: “Any intervention in a complex system may or may not have the intended result, but will inevitably create unanticipated and often undesirable outcomes” The key part of this is that there are MORE outcomes than just the one that is the goal. They might be unfortunate, sometimes they are actually very beneficial. This…
User Research is an important part of User Experience (UX) Design. However, you have to be careful to use this tool in the right way. A hammer is a good tool, but you don’t use it to cut a 2×4. The biggest misuse of User Researching is to validate your existing ideas. In other words,…
It’s a conundrum. To be a successful company, you need customers. To get customers, you must build something great. Most people say, “Go to market quick, then learn and iterate.” I think people are missing a key factor about what it means to have customers. I saw this first hand at several different companies. Many…