Take any given product organization and you will find they fit in one of three camps: Don’t care about User Experience. Sadly, this is more products than one would hope. The most common version of this is the monopoly. When you have a monopoly siutation, there is no driver for innovation or great UX. The…
Recently I visited my mother in Florida. We went out to eat and tried to get into P.F. Changs. If you haven’t tried the food there, it is very good, HOWEVER, the line is usually really long and it sometimes takes hours to get a table. This was the case for us when we showed…
This weekend I saw Monsters vs. Aliens in IMAX 3D in Mountain View. I figured that if I was going to see a movie and pay $40 for popcorn, it might as well be a fantastic experience. I went with my 3 kids and a friend with his 2 kids. Two of the children were…
The kids really like Spongebob Squarepants. I find it pretty funny and I tolerate it. It’s something “we both like”. However, in general, we watch and don’t make any sounds. The kids love Tom & Jerry. I can’t stand it, never could. It’s just slapstick. However, when the kids watch it, they laugh OUT LOUD…
When I was a kid, I broke my ankle pretty badly. Ruined my tennis career (well, maybe). I was in crutches for months. As an adult, my ankle remained weak to the point where I would twist it ALOT. The pain was so bad, it felt like lightning shooting through my body. The thing I…
My netbook broke last week. The video became garbled and would not display. This happens to LCD screens if they are stepped on or dropped or other traumatic event. Sometimes it just happens. So my new Asus eeePC 1000HE was unusable. This was a real bummer, because I have been using it non-stop. I had…
JetBlue has dedicated screens on every seat. They are dialed into DirecTV and you ca nchoose form about 40 channels. The shows are pretty up to date, but possibly are recorded from the day before. Flying JetBlue is so different than flying another airline. Reason: Time Flies when you are watching TV. As a result,…
How long do you prepare for a presenation? I usually like to start thinking about the presentation 1-2 weeks in advance. Hopefully, I have a decent slideshow prepared, but the details rarely come into focus until this 1-2 week period. I’ve been thinking about the ExtJS conference that I am speaking at next Wednesday. I…
Ask any 5 year old: Which is better? 5 pennies or 1 dime. Any 5 year old will tell you the 5 pennies are better. There are MORE of them, of course. They don’t care that the dime is more expensive. OK, now consider your software product. Which is better? 5 small features or 1…
How does one USE a dream? I have alot of dreams and I think of it this way: A dream is your mind’s way of telling you something you don’t want to think about. I used to have a dream about being chased; always in a different place, like Yankee Stadium, the subway, an office…
I just did a quick search. I have never posted an April Fool’s Day message. Quite surprising, since I love the tradition. The internet is particularly good as a medium to deliver fake messages. I was fooled yesterday about the IE8 news. A great April Fool joke is believeable. It makes the listener say, “WOW,…
hip·po (hp)n. pl. hip·pos Def: Hippo is an acronym standing for HIghest Paid Person’s Opinion. This term was coined by Avinash Kaushik, analytics genius. When you are in a meeting and trying to get some decisions made, look around. Who is the person who gets to make the final call? They are your Hippo. It…
The other day, I was lamenting that I didn’t have visibility regarding the usage patterns in the application I work on. I wanted to know who was “at risk” and who was an emerging power user. (Being ‘At Risk’ means that you might not renew because you aren’t using the system much). We had subjective…
Many people I know develop personas for their applications and then pretend to be the user. It’s like method acting for application development. I think this is a bad idea. The reason is simple: Users are random and unpredictable. They will click everywhere and do every possible wrong thing. An engineer once argued with me…