Process
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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…
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Agile Ain’t Wishy Washy
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2 min read
As I write this there’s a group of about 15 developers and designers standing near my desk in a heated but constructive argument about how to check the design is right before the code heads off to QA. Occasionally the dichotomy of agile vs. waterfall is raised, and sometimes “agile” is used as a euphemism…
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Lean UX and Ecommerce Design
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1 min read
For over seven months I’ve been working with the good folks at Alexander Interactive on some ambitious work for MetLife. Here’s a peek into that work with a focus on process. I’m the guy at the whiteboard in the Tokyo board room on page 73 :-) Lean UX and Ecommerce Design: How Ai is transforming…
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A Universal Usability Test, Take 1
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2 min read
In one of the darker corners of my mind I imagine a future where there are a set of laws and industry standards that dictate the acceptable usability of digital products and services, much like medical or engineering standards. I have to think that as we grow increasingly reliant on computer technology for our safety…
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User Experience Areas Explained
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1 min read
Can these disciplines be explained in two sentences? Click for a larger version…
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How To Get More Responsibility
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1 min read
Advice from Scott Berkun on the PM Clinic list: …as a general rule: 1. Do good work 2. Show good work to people who have power to give you more responsibility 3. Ask for more responsibility 4. If told NO, ask what you need to do to get more responsibility 5. Repeat
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To catch you up, Motrin posted the below ad and people, particularly baby-carrying mothers, were so offended that the makers of Motrin pulled the ad. Many of the offended people (“Motrin Moms” there were dubbed) were on Twitter, as well as blogs and YouTube. As a result, marketers are starting to get scared of social…
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New Article on Concept Design Tools
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2 min read
The nice folks at Digital Web Magazine published my new article on Concept Design Tools. It’s already received some nice reviews in the Twitterverse… For those of you who haven’t seen Victor Lombardi’s new article on concept design tools, it’s a must read… …it’s brilliant stuff and super accessible. It’s great to see solid thinking…
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Keep status meetings to .5 hour, but do them every week Establish a natural way for the team to share what everyone is doing — eating together, or tasks we all do together — while protecting personal time to think and work individually Set up a team mailing list and liberally copy everyone on everything;…
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A Schedule for Planning a Presentation
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1 min read
I tend to think and think and think and think and, at the last minute, throw together slides that represent what I want to say. This time I resolved to be more prepared. Here’s my deadlines: Aug 29 – Make schedule; list all potential points I could make; filter points to ones I should make…
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Using Real Options to Value Design Concepts
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3 min read
The common way that financial people will judge the potential value of a project, or a design concept representing a potential future concept, is by building a model, usually a discounted cash flow model like Net Present Value (NPV). The calculation essentially asks, if we do this project and gain the profit we think we’ll…
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Studio 360 on A Pattern Language
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1 min read
This morning Studio 360 broadcast a piece on Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language, and the influence of patterns in software development. If you know the story, you know the story. Still, I always like hearing Alexander speak, and this is the first time I’ve heard Ward Cunningham’s voice.
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Two Things Design Experts Do That Novices Don’t
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2 min read
In my research on concept design processes, I’ve come across two ideas that jumped out as vital behavior that differentiates expert designers from novices. The first comes from Nigel Cross of Open University, UK, who seems to have studied designers and their processes more than anyone I’ve come across. In his Expertise in Design (pdf)…
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Monitor110 was a business/site that tried to filter information for institutional investors. This post mortem from a founder probably won’t reveal any new lessons, but it’s always powerful to see theory — in this case the value of the beta release — played out in the form of failure… …By mid-2005 the system worked, but…
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Bruce Hannah on Prototyping
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1 min read
I’m back from Overlap 08 which is becoming my reliable annual inspiration for all things professional. It will surely fuel more thoughts here, but I wanted to capture one thing Deb Johnson said that Bruce Hannah taught her in design school: Mock it up before you fuck it up. The profanity I think is not…