Katie and I voted this week. They used a new kind of electronic voting machine with some serious UX issues. To give them the good news first, they solved one of the most important issues. Before voting, the machine gave a PAPER version of your votes for your approval. It was under glass, but you…
I have been working more on the book. The chapter I am working on deals with specific UI elements, like menus, buttons and other controls. It is amazing to me how many details there are in just a simple button. Bill Scott calls these “interesting moments“. For example in a button: At rest: The button…
I notice that I often avoid certain large tasks because I know I don’t have time to complete them. If I have a meeting in 30 minutes, I don’t want to open up PowerPoint and design the next generation of business intelligence tools. All that will happen is that I get things set up, start…
Every Sunday, I have extr time with the kids. We want to go into town nd do little shopping. Yet, every Sunday, I forget that most stores are closed. Our favorite Sushi place is closed. Even Guitar World (we needed to buy some picks) was closed. Why is this? The weekend is the one part…
Forums have led a strange existence on the web for a long time. I have seen the evolution from AOL and bulletin boards to more sophisticated technologies with lots of features. The problem is, I feel that forums have not evolved and become more useful. My favorite type of forum is Experts Exchange. By using…
Recently, we got the Wii for the family. It has been a really interesting and well designed experience so far. Alot of great innovations are baked into this thing. The last week, we added a few new features. First, I downloaded the internet channel. The Wii connects to our family Wi-Fi network just like a…
Toys R Us’ website sucks. I have been trying to buy a Wii controller using some gift cards for weeks from them. Here is the pattern of my unhappiness: Search stinks. If I search for Wii controller, show me a page of Wii controllers. How hard is that?? Makes me click 5 times to get…
Check out Smashing Magazine. It has an awesome set of future design products. I haven’t really paid too much attention to Smashing Magazine in the past. I don’t know why. They content is really nice. Its very popular and speaks directly to my interests. I just subscribed to it. I am a new fan.
Ok, so now we have a second data point after Iowa. New Hampshire, which was a dead-even race for Clinton and Obama now has Obama ahead by 13 percentage points. It is riddiculous to say that New Hampshire was taking into account the “retail campaigning” that happens in Iowa because New Hampshire gets it just…
California is a pain in the ass. They have these propositions and initiatives and special elections ALL THE TIME. Every single time we have to vote, they ask us questions that we can not answer. It is terribly designed user experience. Never ask a question that has significant implications that the user has no way…
The last two years has been a major education for me in Marketing. First at Intuit, where I felt the entire organization is run by the Marketing Department. I felt that the main goal of marketing was to project (micro)manage incremental changes in high volume processes. In other words, there was a marketing person in…
CompUSA is closing it’s doors. Apparently they are being liquidated. So now is the time to purchase electronics if one is near you. Maybe a color printer! It’s amazing to me how long it takes for predictions to come true. In the 80’s they said, “Computers will make a paperless office”. We still aren’t paperless,…
I added print.css to the blog. This is something I hardly ever do, but should. Printing is important. Now commadot.com prints properly. Mostly I hid things. But I found I had to update a few fonts and alignments. #body_left, #hero, #search, a.postToggle, div.item_panel, #header2, #footer, div.navigation, #comm_form { display:none } * * { font-family: verdana;…
User Experience Architect: “So guys, I am going to go to the user and try the product. Does the basic use case work?” Engineer: “Yes, it works.” Quality Assurance: “Yes, it works.” User after trying it: “No, it doesn’t work.” Engineer: “Must be user error.” Which part of the joke is funny? It doesn’t really…