February 4, 2010
UX Tip: Banish Users Forever
Real people use your product, not users. If you can’t describe them like they are your next-door neighbor, then you can’t design for them. Get to know them intimately and banish the word user from design discussions.
January 10, 2010
How to migrate a Cisco VPN configuration into Snow Leopard
Could I migrate an old Cisco profile into Snow Leopard with borderline zero knowledge about my VPN connection? Yep–and here’s how I did it.
December 20, 2009
When product segmentation goes to pot.
There’s a saying that an interface portrays the organization that created it. What’s going on at LogMeIn?
December 19, 2009
What if Pac Man was an alternative reality game?
This idea is rooted in the labyrinth of cities. Alleys and streets become the corridors. The players race through a neighborhood, collecting pellets and devouring their competitors. It’s a race-meets-scavenger hunt.
April 7, 2009
My Wordle
Wordle.net has been around for a while, and I finally decided to post what my personal Del.icio.us cloud would look like.
April 5, 2009
Tips for working outside on a Macbook
It’s beautiful outside and I’m reading and writing from a patio café in Raleigh. I’ve always preferred working outside, but squinting to read my Macbook’s screen in the sun always deterred me. I looked into those photographer’s shades, but those are bulky and weird for café culture. I found the winning strategy in OS X’s Universal Access.
April 2, 2009
Video Embed Test Code
I was trying to figure out the differences in dimensions among embedded video players. It struck me that others might be looking for the same thing. So, I created an html file with embeds of popular video players, along with their pixel dimensions.
March 28, 2009
Podcast on Online Marriages
A few weeks ago and prior to my core conversation at SXSW, Evan Carroll interviewed me about Love in the Cloud: Online-only marriages.
March 27, 2009
Progress bar alternatives in the UI
The progress bar is a bit cold. It unemotionally calculates the height of a bar based on elementary math. So I started thinking. People tend to have a unique attraction to faces. You see this in eye tracking studies. What if the progress bar was humanized a bit?
An improved Twitter UI?
Just for fun, I thought I’d see what Twitter might look like if it exposed some of the more commonly used features directly in the interface.