I listen to NPR (National Public Radio) every morning. I have been a consistent paying member for years. Every few months, they have a pledge week where they try and get listeners to donate money to support the radio network. They try all kinds of techniques to increase effectiveness: Dollar-for-dollar matching, free gifts, prizes, donate…
User Experience Design is about asking the fundamental question: Why? Why do people love the things they love and hate the things they hate and ignore most of the rest? Why does the world act the way it does? Once you understand Why something happens, you can design a strategy to maximize the positive outcomes. A…
I have this horrible mini-UX experience in LinkedIn. Overall, I love LinkedIn, but this one tiny thing is like a small pipe in a hallway that I keep stubbing my toe against. You can try it out too. Go to LinkedIn and look at the top right. You see the “People you may know” box?…
Which is more important? Something that is easy to learn or something that is fun to use once it’s learned? Most software developers get this exactly wrong. Riding a bicycle. At first, riding a bicycle is scary and physically painful. (Falling off a bike is not fun) However, once you learn it, it is extremely…
How do you decide what to build next? Let’s start with some high level categories: New Whiz Bang Features. Sales is going to love demo’ing. Marketing is going to love the story-telling. Polish the Apple. This is going back over existing features and making them better. More polished, more nuanced. Sales and Marketing won’t care,…
We switched to Verizon Wireless many years ago. We were using Cingular?AT&T and were greatly relieved when we switched. The network was much better. No more dropped calls, no more static. We were in “4 bar” nirvana. We got super simple clamshell phones with virtually no features. I bought a game for mine, Breakout. Fast-forward…
Firefox has been generally open source with their design process. It’s an interesting approach and bound to get people interested and possibily to inspire some great ideas. On the other hand, it’s alot of work to manage the flow of ideas. Their latest challenge is to re-conceptualize how bookmarks, history and other data are rendered…
What is the best way to gather user research? I believe Dian Fossey is a great role model for how to achieve great results and learn about your users lives. Dian didn’t ask the gorillas “So, tell me what kind of personality you have?” Obviously, the gorillas would not have intelligent things to say to…
I saw this fun contest on Twitter called PerfectBusiness. The rules were simple: Boil down a great business idea into a single tweet. Now here is a contest that I could do well with. Here was my idea tweet: @PerfectBusiness #micropitch : Pandora for unsigned bands. Seed real artists, listen to unsigned similar artists. Focused…
What you call things is incredibly important. The words you choose carry baggage and implications that people will adopt. The words help people remember and frame an idea. Take for example the current Healthcare debate in the U.S. There is so much complexity and so much riding on one single monolithic bill. Everyone assumes that…
I have been reading this great book called Made to Stick. (Great so far) In it, they talk about Proverbs. Proverbs are short phrase-like ideas that encode a much deeper meaning into them. They are much easier to remember because of the encoding. Examples: A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush…
I currently flip flop between TrillianAstra and Digsby as my Instant Messenger of choice. Trillian is a beautiful looking application, but some of the interaction design is lacking that I find really smooth in Digsby. The little widget on the right of my blog is ingenious and one of the reasons I usually go with…
Yesterday, I was introduced to this product called Balsamiq Mockups. After seeing Flash Catalyst and Microsoft Expression Blend 3 in action, I was hoping for something easier, simpler and more fun. I got all three. Using Balsamiq required no training or anxiety. Part of the reason is the limitations (constraints) the product imposed. You couldn’t…
I received an email about attending a Microsoft demo of their product Expression Blend. Specifically this part called SketchFlow. I spent a little under an hour trying to use it to see if it would help me communicate designs better. A little under an hour was all I could take without losing my grip. Warning: …