Noise Between Stations

  • Microreview of Financial Engines

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    2 min read

    Kevin Mercadante has a great review of Financial Engines on the Investor Junkie site. Here’s the key points I took away: Founded in 1996, Financial Engines is a retirement plan advisory service for employees of participating employer retirement plans (which many online advisors work outside of). They provide management services and advice so that either…

  • Key Points from an Interview with Dr. Harry Moskowitz

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    1 min read

    aka the father of modern portfolio theory “Perhaps the most important job of a financial advisor is to get their clients in the right place on the efficient frontier in their portfolios,” he told me. “But their No. 2 job, a very close second, is to create portfolios that their clients are comfortable with. Advisors…

  • Key Points from “Investor Behavior: The Psychology of Financial Planning and Investing”

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    3 min read

    “Policy-Based Financial Planning: Decision Rules for a Changing World” by Dave Yeske, managing director, and Elisa Buie, CEO of Yeske Buie. Based on their 2011 paper, Yeske and Buie provided a six-step process for creating effective financial planning policies for each client: Engage in the discovery process in which the financial planner learns about the…

  • Why I’d Love to See Graded Interaction Design Problems

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    2 min read

    One reason I love bouldering is that it’s game-like. No matter how much experience a climber has, we’re all at a certain level with certain climbs (they’re actually called “problems”) that currently challenge us. It’s like playing a well-crafted video game: the levels you’ve finished are easy, the levels ahead of you are frustratingly hard,…

  • Report: Financial planning = happiness

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    2 min read

    Pulling out some highlights of the Household Financial Planning Survey: people who plan feel more confident about their financial decision‐making, manage to save more money, and feel better about their progress only about a third (31%) of decision‐makers today report having ever put together a comprehensive financial plan. And just 35 percent of decision‐makers report…

  • Learning JavaScript, Day 4

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    2 min read

    I recently decided to re-learn programming. Because I already know HTML and CSS the web is a fast prototyping environment for me, so JavaScript is the logical language for me to learn. Besides, JavaScript has stood the test of time and the community has improved it a lot It’s now on the backend too There’s…

  • 2014 is the Year I Learn JavaScript

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    3 min read

    I’m at the point in my project where I need to prototype some software ideas. Doing it on the web is cheaper, simpler, and faster than prototyping a mobile app. And everything I need to do can be done on the front-end, for now. So I’m probably looking at JavaScript or Ruby on Rails, though…

  • Reader Reviews #6/7: “eye-opening….thoroughly researched”

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    2 min read

    Why We Fail is available in eBook form at O’Reilly and all the reviewers there gave me 5 stars! Yay! Paul in Austin writes: The case studies alone provide an very interesting read to anybody who has some interest in technology in general. Each case study has been thoroughly researched with plenty of references. The…

  • Trends in Design for Financial Services, April 2014

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    1 min read

    I frequently design financial services, and having just rolled off a project took some time to reflect on trends I’ve noticed. Here’s the first three that came to mind: Active participation by the affluent: Sometimes financial services companies assume the affluent don’t want to interact with computer services themselves. In reality, the affluent don’t want…

  • Good Design Can Make the Elevator Pitch Futile

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    2 min read

    I had a five-minute conversation with an angel investor last week and described the product I’m working on. His response: “Similar things are being done by bigger companies with giant marketing budgets, so you’ll need a very clever marketing idea to succeed. What is it?” There was an uncomfortable pause. On one hand, I haven’t…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Startup Legal Straight Dope

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    2 min read

    A benefit of being a speaker at Failcon was getting an invitation to a talk hosted by Anit Guha of Orrick Legal. Here’s some of his wisdom that I noted down: When choosing a name use the uspto site and a 3rd party search service Avoid incorporating in California; use Delaware C Corp. Not only…

  • RealNetworks and The Trap of Binary Thinking

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    2 min read

    While I was researching my book Why We Fail: Learning from Experience Design Failures I spent some time reading about people’s experience with RealNetworks, particularly the RealPlayer, and wondering if they were worthy of inclusion in the book, particularly the don’t be evil chapter. At that point there was no smoking gun, no hard evidence…

  • “We are going to make one computer for each quadrant”

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    1 min read

    Love this Steve Jobs story: …Jobs turned around Apple and did it pretty quickly. He did two primary things as far as I can tell. First, he got his people into the top jobs and got rid of the executives who had been calling the shots before he showed up. And second, he brought focus…