Five Sketches™

When solving a software-design problem or a web-design problem, you get the best results from following a design process. I’m not referring to something I made up. I’m referring to something that people who are trained in “Design” will recognise as a design process. And such processes inevitably include divergence and convergence.
Divergence is the stage when […]

I have one item to add to this usability checklist (http://ping.fm/n2VQn): users don’t have to repeat any input. #
TG Daily on nettiquette: “within the […] Internet, just like in real life, there is this thing called personal space.” http://bit.ly/Sycha #
Product-design & localisation Fail: in Western Australia, I bought a yellow gel toilet-bowl cleaner. Once […]

Fresh advice, still:
“Usability goals are business goals. Web sites that are hard to use frustrate customers, forfeit revenue, and erode brands.
Executives can apply a disciplined approach to improve all aspects of ease-of-use. Start with usability reviews to assess specific flaws and understand their causes. Then fix the right problems through action-driven design practices. Finally, maintain […]

Involving users throughout the software-development cycle is touted as a way to ensure project success. Does usability testing count as user contact? You bet! But since most companies test their products later in the process, when it’s difficult to react meaningfully to the user feedback, here are two ways to get your testing done sooner.
Prioritise. […]

People have a preferred conative style. Their conative style is how they prefer to approach a problem.
Actually, people can easily adopt a different conative style, for a while. Most people in the workplace have done this. However, when the pressure is on, people retreat to their preferred conative style. There’s nothing wrong with this, except in these two […]

Search the web, then refine the search by clicking additional terms in the tag cloud. Do I like it? :$ You try it: http://ping.fm/3lVjd #
Overheard outside the YVR airport lounge: “Four Newfies were in there and drank ALL the beer. They’re OK; there just isn’t any more beer.” #
Expert prediction: computers to discover remaining […]

I was reading a comment by Creative Sage CIO and CEO, Cathryn Hrudicka, about corporations that want to use social media to reach their market:
The process of trying to become a more “transparent” organization, so they can use social media tools, pushes many organizations—companies, nonprofits, trade associations—into change, especially if they have had a very bureaucratic and non-transparent […]

Having a good design idea is not an amazing event. People have good design ideas all the time. What is amazing is having lots of good design ideas, so that they can be combined and iterated into the best possible design.
Here’s why ideas are disposable:

Sketching lets you capture lots of ideas, quickly and inexpensively.
The more ideas […]