-
Seven Types of Customer Experience Failure
•
1 min read
If you want a quick summary of my “Why We Fail” book in the form of two AI-generated voices discussing the seven main types of customer experience failure, then this podcast episode is for you.
-
Don’t Say You Weren’t Warned
•
1 min read
I asked Google’s AI what it thinks Google will be in 10 years, and the answer was HAL 9000, but blue.
-
Star Trek Is Now A Design Lesson
•
3 min read
This recent Klarna story is fascinating: The fintech firm Klarna is severing its relationships with two of the biggest enterprise software providers in favor of automating its services with AI. And the company says it could potentially eliminate more. Klarna co-founder and CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski recently explained the rationale in a conference call, the financial…
-
Johnny Smith Learns the Cornet
•
1 min read
Having learned to fly from pilots he befriended, Smith enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces in the hopes of becoming a military pilot. He was invalidated from the flight programme because of imperfect vision in his left eye. Given a choice between joining the military band and being sent to mechanic’s school, Smith…
-
Balancing intellect and natural instincts
•
1 min read
If this was a strong idea in 1897, it’s 100x more true now… Henry Childs Merwin explores the concept of being “close to nature” and contrasts it with the effects of excessive civilization. He argues that being close to nature involves engaging directly with natural forces and maintaining primeval instincts such as pugnacity, pity, and…
-
We always need a Plan B
•
1 min read
“‘The pessimists left Germany, the optimists ended up in Auschwitz.” The lesson from the Holocaust, he says, is to be on your guard. “We always need a Plan B, even today.’”
-
I’m stating the obvious, I know, but having lived in Hamburg for a year and then returning to Manhattan, especially midtown, reminds me of the energy that propelled my career when I was younger: the masses of people crammed into giant buildings, filling the wide sidewalks, filling every space available. It’s not necessarily a good…
-
“Silicon Valley is the land of low-capital, low-labor growth. Software development requires fewer people than infrastructure and hard goods manufacturing, both to get started and to run as an ongoing operation. Silicon Valley is the place where you get rich without creating jobs. It’s run by investors who hate the idea of paying people. That’s…
-
When Should I Charge My Car?
•
1 min read
It’s such a simple question we don’t think to ask it. But the answer is out there.
-
Why Machine Learning Scares Us
•
1 min read
So it turns out that the flavor of AI that is finally reaching the mainstream is the large language model. And we’re uncomfortable with it not only for the obvious reasons that there’s a machine acting eerily like a human, but also because we can’t explain precisely how it’s doing what it’s doing. And in…
-
Passwords Are Now Outdated
•
1 min read
There’s a lot to be said about how to secure our online information while providing a good experience; hasn’t anyone written this book yet? In any case, I think a good, uncommon, guideline would be: Do not use human memory To remember and recall takes work, and I’d rather not expend my precious attention and…
-
My Critique of the RGT Start Up Sound
•
1 min read
In this video I listen to the sound as it’s used in real life, talk about what the sound is intended to accomplish, and then give it a sound score. And then I try to improve on it. RGT is a great, freemium service that’s fun for cycling indoors. It connects to your bike and…
-
Track Buying Not Spending
•
2 min read
When I designed software for personal finance, I thought a lot about helping people simplify and understand their cash flow. One method I created is an exceedingly simple way to track spending on projects that my wife and I have been using for years. Most people track their money by tracking their spending. On the…
-
In the field of user experience design, we research users and often talk about the user pain points we’ve observed. When I use pain here I don’t mean inconveniences, as when I can’t find just the right streaming music playlist to match my mood. I mean tasks that emotionally hurt, such as knowing you need…
-
This Blog is Almost Old Enough to Drink in America
•
1 min read
Recently the web turned 30 years old, and I realized that this blog was started almost exactly 10 years after the web, making it 20 years old this month. And maybe that makes it a good time to start blogging again? Not really. Although I am losing faith in Medium and Facebook as places to…