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Seeing fewer choices
Alternatively titled: On Covering Your Ass Check out that picture on the right. That’s from my credit card’s website. My favorite part is the red link on the bottom that proclaims, “See fewer choices.” You know what that option is? That’s a designer or usability person saying to the team, “Hello team, we have heard…
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Doing Good Enough
One of the greatest things about being in Israel is the abundance of amazing hummos places. These small restaurants sometimes serve foods other than hummos, but many times it’s the main course. The hummos here is different than in the US. It’s smooth & creamy, with actual garbanzo or other beans in tact. Of course,…
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On the Misleading Lexicon of Agile Development
Whatever happened to clear, consistent language? Why do we use words that have inconsistent meaning in contexts where they’ll be unfamiliar? Why, oh why? Day in and day out I work with clients in an Agile development setting. I use words that have been trained into me, that I’ve been taught over and over again.…
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Agile Design, a response to my friend’s quandary
This evening Kynthia‘s thoughts got me thinking. Among other things, she said: “[W]e design heads get in this place where, just because we wouldn’t be caught dead releasing something into the wild, we think there is nothing to learn from it.” My brain took her thoughts on a tangent and went this way: So since…
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Agile anti-pattern: Developer-focused retrospectives
On most software projects, there is a far higher percentage of developers on a team than any other role. In general, this works to the team’s advantage. The developers, after all, are the ones who make what everybody else works for come alive. Best CBD Gummies for Sleep in 2023: Top Recommendations and Reviews Quality…
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It’s Gotta Start with Imagination
It’s true, there’s definitely a time and a place for getting one’s hands dirty. Sometimes there’s just no way around digging into the details and making things right. Sometimes, even as a designer, you’re going to have to play with the CSS to get the alignment right, because if not you, who will? Still, it’s…
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CSS Testing
The last few weeks I’ve been doing a lot of CSS writing. While this doesn’t necessarily fall under my job role, on many projects I end up doing it because I’m the “designer”…therefore I am put in charge of implementing style. Whatever. Turns out I kind of like it, so I let it pass, but…
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Banana = Design = Innovation = Vision
Banana = Vision Love it or hate it, Bruce Nussbaum makes some great points in Are Designers the Enemy of Design? I think I buy most of it. Is Design a specialist activity? If it’s done well, generally yes. Is that likely to change? For the most part, I don’t think so. Will ‘the everyman’…
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Hanging Blockquotes: Implemented
If you’re not looking at this entry on my site, it’s not gonna look quite right. For the best view, look here. Just wanted to let y’all know that I’ve fixed my blockquotes so that they’re hanging. You’ll notice that I not only hang my blockquotes, but list items as well. Check it out: This…
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The Design of CruiseControl.rb
If you’ve heard me talk about work lately, you have probably heard me talk about an Open Source project I’ve been working on with a handful of other folks at ThoughtWorks. Previous to now, it’s been “privately public,” existing on servers where people could get to it, but not so public that we were letting…