-
It’s not about touch screens
In a few months, remember that you heard it here first: Technology pundits are sure to hail Apple’s iPhone and soon-to-be competitors for using touch screens in their designs. I submit, and will continue to maintain that it is not the touch screens, but the interactions that those screens afford. Many others will try to…
-
On Mobile Phones and Commitment
I was talking with a friend the other day, and the fact that he does not have a cell phone came up. I, of course, was amazed. Immediately I said what most mobile-toting folk would say: “I don’t know what I would do without my phone!” His response was simple: “No, it’s easy. You know…
-
Sharing Photos
From the burrows of my brain flows a fresh design idea. Hey Canon, feel free to implement: So, you know how when you’re taking a picture with a group of people and the person who was elected to take the photo has to take it 12 times with 12 different cameras? Why don’t they make…
-
Who rocks the house? IU Informatics Rocks the House!
5 teams, count ’em…5! Simply amazing. Five teams from the IU Informatics HCI/d program were chosen for the CHI 2007 Student Design Competition. Let’s review the participants and outcomes in all of the previous SDC’s: 2006 – 2 teams selected from IU, one of which won the competition 2005 – 4 teams selected, one of…
-
The Themes of Good Design
Most people who have worked with me up to this point have probably noticed that I have a strong urge to think about solving problems using Design methods and methodologies. This is not accidental. In my heart of hearts, I believe that the work I do each day will help make the world a better…
-
With a Good Pair
There’s just something about working with others that makes the job so much more enjoyable. In many agile development frameworks, the idea of “Pairing” prevails as a key concept. When pairing occurs, two developers work together to progress a single user story, working together weave code into coherent, valuable functionality. There are many reasons why…
-
What do you do when your business’s ideas don’t align with how employees think?
Just something I was pondering this morning on the train in to work. A long time ago now, user researchers at Intuit realized that small business owners don’t like to think about their money in terms of “debits” and “credits,” which are the terms that bankers and other more heavily trained business people like to…
-
What kind of User Experience Professional am I?
Friend and colleague Jeff Patton floated an idea a few weeks ago around the thought that there are 3 types of User Experience Professionals: Before-, During-, and After-People. I think this is a brilliant way to characterize UXers…simple and to the point, with no big-giant-confusing-wordiness. Of course, all the qualities of these different types of…
-
In Response to Kevin
In response to me beaming about my job, Kevin wrote: Would you say that you are doing all the things you were trained to do at the School of Informatics? I got to see Matt and Apurva over the weekend, and one of the things that came up was how little their jobs resembled what…
-
On Innovation
I’ve been hearing a lot of talk around the office lately about Innovation. This subject is pretty close to my heart…and I’ve got some pretty strong beliefs about what innovation is and is not. For now, though, I’ll just let someone else do the talking: “For a company, innovation is something of a two-edged sword:…