Tag: humor

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Reboot or restart?

I find this funny for two reasons.

  • It spoofs the “choice” that many error messages present to us. It amounts to: “The program failed. OK?” It’s not OK, but your only choice is to “agree” with the message.
  • It spoofs the developer jargon that we read in error messages: a reboot versus a system restart.
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Usability, not drowning

Is it a usability experiment? Are they testing the theory that a baby in a bucket won’t fall over as easily as a baby in a bath?

babies-in-buckets

Photo from Yahoo.co.jp news.

Actually, it’s a photo that accompanies a news story about babies in IJmuiden, The Netherlands, whose parents were learning baby massage. The warm bath in advance is supposed to make them feel like when they were in the uterus.

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Failure, then sketching success

Developing Five Sketches™ came with its share of challenges. Fortunately, all obstacles were overcome. Some of those obstacles were even on the official Ways To Fail list in Seth Godin’s book, The Big Moo.

I’m glad I didn’t have to face them all:

  • Keep swimmingKeep secrets.
  • Set aggressive deadlines for others to get buy in—then change them when they aren’t met.
  • Be certain you’re right and ignore those who disagree with you.
  • Resist testing your theories.
  • Focus more on what people think and less on whether your idea is as good as it could be.
  • Assume that a critical mass must embrace your idea for it to work.
  • Choose an idea where the preceding point is a requirement.
  • Assume that people who don’t instantly get your idea are bullheaded, shortsighted, or even stupid.
  • Don’t bother to dramatically increase the quality of your presentation style.
  • Insist that you’ve got to go straight to the president of the organisation to get something done.
  • Always go for the big win.

Of course this is only funny in retrospect, now that I can see my way through any design challenge. Swimmingly.