Imagine your users are normal smart people who are using your application during Halloween. They are happily using your great product when all of the sudden, “ding Dong!”. Oh, it must be a cute little bunch of trick or treaters. Let’s stand up and walk over to the door. Oh, what a cute little princess!…
This Saturday, I skipped P-Camp and went into San Francisco to see the Interaction Design gathering at Adapative Path‘s offices. (Photos) I have to say, I was kind of disappointed. P-Camp, last year was pretty dynamic with alot of energy and interesting talks. The IxDA conference seemed really toned down and the presentations were mixed.…
I use the concept of Flow, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (love that name) to attempt to describe how you should position your product and your customers. In the picture, you can see the different positions one could be in. A1 is when you are doing something easy and you have enough skill to do it. Like riding…
Lately, I have been really frustrated with Antivirus programs. The user experience is usually painful. I manage dozens of machines from friends and family and at work. I install antivirus all the time and have used alot of them over the years. Here is my rundown of the bad and the ugly. Norton Antivirus Every…
The presentation last night went well. Very talkative bunch, but they asked good questions. I had a good time and hope they did too. My slides can be downloaded here as a PPTX or PDF versions. I don’t like putting them on Slideshare because they only support PPT, not PPTX. I do things to my…
“Say hello to my little friend!” I just go my new netbook, the Asus EeePC 1000 HE. It is slightly heavier than I expected, but not too bad. The screen is 10″ and seems plenty big for what I need. Just to be clear on my purposes, I need something for: Taking on trips that…
Marketo launched it’s Lead Management 3.0 product this weekend. It has been a long time coming (- been working on it for 4 months). The scope was pretty big. We refactored the entire UI from top to bottom. We improved usability in countless ways. The graphic design is polished and consistent. We added a bunch…
I love watching/analyzing people argue, including with myself. It is the key attribute of human civilization. We all have points of view and opinions. I have thought deeply about the key differences people have and how to deal with them. In the end, we all want to “win” the argument and get our way. So…
I switched over to Threatfire for my anti-virus/malware protection. I had been an evangelist for Avast for quite some time, but the registration process was just a little too annoying. It seemed that every time I turned around, I had to re-register. I have alot of computers that I take care of (friends/family) so it all…
By request, here is a zip of my cloud theme. I don’t feel like it was perfect, but I liked it for my first try. Feel free to use it and modify it. I can’t sit still on themes very long. I keep feeling the urge to change them. It’s not good UX, but I…
Kevin at work pointed me at a new Instant Messenger on the block called Digsby. Installation was a little scary because it asks you if you want to install all this other junk. I guess they need to make some money, but I clicked “decline” all the way through. You have to make a digsby…
Playing around with this theme. Why do I change themes all the time? It’s bad user experience to switch that much. I just can’t help myself. I get so bored with the same look. This theme feels nice. Today, California passed a budget and gave huge concessions to a single state representative. Why did they…
Have you ever experienced a person is describing their product and say, “You can skin it however you want!” I hate when people do this. It’s an obvious assumption that the only thing one might want to do is change the color of the button or text. Here is why it’s a mess: The structure…
I think I want to buy a mini-laptop. Recently, I gave the older laptop to the boys to use as their computer. I used their old computer for spare parts to make my mother-in-laws computer come back to life. (Make sure your computer signs it’s organ donor card today) So I have been left without…