March 2010
1 post
listening to "Joy Division - Transmission" →
Listen to the silence. Let it ring on.
Charlie Brown via Frank Miller →
Courtesy Rob Neyer’s blog on ESPN.com.
The notion of blogging as an ongoing,... →
But how many people are strong enough to admit to the world when they’re wrong?
February 2009
1 post
Your moment of weakness will never end →
Once upon a time, movie stars could be secret divas, berating and belittling all the folks ‘beneath’ them which, apparently, included everyone on set. No more! Christian Bale was recently captured on tape rabid with anger, and now…
Hit the link above to hear the OMG, it’s so amazing, dance remix of Christian Bale’s on-set meltdown.
In a connected world,...
January 2009
5 posts
how much damage can an individual do to a brand? →
“What does the contemporary self want? The camera has created a culture of...”
– William Deresiewicz
(via)
(via cajunboy)
Posted for MR.
Gawking at a foundering vessel
Watching Nick Denton’s Gawker empire has historically been a ton of fun. Gossip! Cheeky writing! Brilliant metatagging! Some of this is still present, but a new formula is emerging: profoundly misleading article titles (“the hook”!) followed up with posts that mistake vitriol for passion and smart ass for smart. I mean… Marvel as Owen makes the case that the most important...
england, abu ghraib and engaging with content... →
Emma Brockes, of the UK’s Guardian interviews Lynndie England, the female face of the Abu Ghraib atrocities. I hear designers all the time saying no one reads on the web. Reading the piece linked above, I was unable to stop reading.
A thesis: insightful, engaging, relevant content will find an audience online, length be damned. It’s boring (or list type-)content that merits that most...
December 2008
15 posts
Chrysler thanks US taxpayers, using US taxpayer... →
When I was a little one - too young to earn any cash on my own - my folks would slip me some cash around Christmas, with strict instructions to use every last penny on gifts for my siblings (and, it went without saying, on my folks, too.) I was always embarassed by the practice. What kind of ‘gift’ was it for my Mom when she was the one paying for it? One Christmas, I even asked Mom...
user experience design in 2009: 3 predictions
Futurism is fun!
the economic slowdown means fewer clients, reduced budgets at surviving clients and increased competition for remaining projects. Full many a decent interactive shop will shut its doors or reduce staff dramatically in 2009.
a custom-designed iPhone app is going to move one Fortune 500 company into a (commanding) leadership position within its market segment.
as part of his...
“By indirections find directions out.”
– The character of Polonius in the play Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, in a slightly obtuse reference to lawn bowling. In this context: if you can’t observe users in situ or in a lab, study the tracks they have left on your web site logs, on the social networks and in the feedback that has been...
Will Leitch v. Q-Tip →
When a celebrity responds to criticism like this, I can’t help but think the critic’s observations have been both unexpected and acute. But I also can’t help but feel a certain empathy for Q-Tip; who hasn’t posted something stupid in their life?
It isn’t too hard, getting your voice heard. Online, it might even be too easy.
Walmart iPhone will trigger seismic shift in media...
With a 10 MM install base already, building custom iPhone apps for certain clients already makes a ton of sense. But what’s the install base going to look like after Walmart’s had the things in stores for a full year? And how many clients won’t be, ah, touched?
contract with corporate america
I want to renegotiate this country’s contract with corporate america. I want to return to the days when corporations believed they had an obligation to employees and the communities in which those employees lived. I want management teams more focused on the long-term viability of the organization and less obsessed with the price at which shares are selling in an irrational market. I would...
this is not a love song (see previous post)
A friendly critic read the last post and challenged me to describe other options a cash-strapped corporation might pursue besides layoffs. I’ve been chewing it over. I’ve got ideas. (I’m also still employed, so I don’t have tons of time. But.) First idea: you could retool the corporation’s salary tiers, with the CEO earning no more than 10x the lowest-paid worker, and...
500,000 jobs gone in November: not a speck of... →
News of the jobs lost in the US this year left me disappointed in corporate America, although not surprised. Even (sporadically) charming entrepeneurs like Nick Denton are falling into line and cutting staff from healthy organizations, as if employee layoffs were panacea and prophylactic all in one.
Look, folks: our economy is in tough shape. We need something new to build around. We need...
I am not a guru, nor was meant to be →
I’m purely delighted by this post from a fellow Chicago interactive design/IA/UX practitioner. Anyone who dubs him or herself an expert in our rapidly evolving field is almost inevitably self-deceived. Props to someone with a large enough ego to focus on expertise, as opposed to any theoretical expert status.
an articulate economist? →
I don’t know enough about economics to know whether the author of this is spot-on in his analysis or a charming fraud, but the clarity of his writing makes me lean towards the former. Also, selfishly, to wish for more posts more often.
fear of information architecture
Have you heard this before, my IA/UX brethren?
“IAs take all the creative possibilities out of projects.”
I’ve listened to variations on this theme from three separate creative directors (none of whom, I rush to add, had worked with me prior to us having this conversation.) By the third iteration, I was ready with a series of responses:
IA/UX folk are creative, though of a...
November 2008
8 posts
the fallout fallout
Fallout 3 is a heady drug, one of my favorite video games in decades. If Fallout 2 is even one tenth as intoxicating, I will be a very happy man. I was delighted to find the older version of Fallout available for download from a web site full of nice touches, including the real-time feedback on the registration page, the simplicity of the narrative structure and a thoroughly contemporary sense of...
“At the end of the day, I want the day to end.”
take the discount on qualitative usability studies
How often in life does the cheaper of two options translate into better quality?
I recently had the chance to work with a large (national) usability services organization. The results they presented were pedestrian. There were several useful observations, two obvious plugs for more usability testing via the large (national) usability services organization, and a considerable quantity of gauzy,...
using a shovel to fish
When considering the use of innovative or bleeding-edge technologies in the world of interactive design, my operating philosophy has always been that you bring into play the tools and techniques that are the most appropriate for the challenge under consideration. Kotaku.com highlights a discussion of the use of 2D and 3D graphics in game design that underscores how ‘old technology’ can...
If games are language systems, and language is a... →
Interesting (though at times head-scratching) article, picked up via Kotaku. The author posited that “writing in a video game was more than just creating a setting or series of options, it was ultimately about designing a language.” The Wittgenstein references drift right (or left) over my scalp, but some folks will find them thought-provoking. I personally appreciate the reminder of...
Three things I hate about goop.com →
Am I being unfair? I’m sorry, but these are three mistakes no one should be making in 2008.
First, meaningless animation to kick off the site Even on my second visit, I’m still getting all sorts of pointless zooming and sliding, drawing my attention to those big buttons that look like navigation but in fact are just… Wanna-be navigation (no. 2) Human wanna-bes are sad to...
will "best practices" be the death of innovation...
Clients (quite understandably) are always asking for ‘best practices,’ defined over at Wikipedia as: “an idea that asserts that there is a technique, method, process, activity, incentive or reward that is more effective at delivering a particular outcome than any other technique, method, process, etc.” Look hard at that description. “More effective… than any...
um? guys? greed was never good... →
Is it possible that virtue could be better for a business (in the long run) than vice?
October 2008
7 posts
wall street in 2008 - now completely irrational! →
So, you have some moderately persuasive data telling you that the country, as a whole, is feeling pretty grim about the economy. It’s no secret that, post 9-11, consumer confidence has been a significant factor in keeping the US economy afloat. So the receipt of that news leads investors on Wall Street to… start a crazed bidding war over shares in companies that might be gone in the...
“Being part of an effort that fails does not make you a loser; it makes you a...”
– Steve Schmidt, the not-exactly-clueless campaign manager for John McCain, in an article on time.com citing the Washington Post of 10-26-2008.
make smart decisions on staffing cuts
Deciding who should be cut in a particular round of layoffs isn’t much fun, but as you sit around a table and throw out names you can’t deny that (a) you’re grateful you aren’t one of the saps about to get cut loose and (b) it’s a great chance for you to do the dirty work you think is necessary for the health of your organization. The temptation is to settle a score,...
shock! I heart my new iPhone 3G!
Of course I love the damn thing, but is it true love or just a gadgetary infatuation? People have chuckled at my archaic cell phone (a Siemens model circa 2001) but it worked well with voice and text, and I had no fears about dropping the thing into my pocket. Evolution doesn’t inevitably translate into improvement, right?
But screw my thoughtful reservations. Feature by feature comparisons...
high water rising (again)
In 1998 I predicted the popping of the tech bubble and the business carnage that would ensue. (A bunch of other people did, too, to be fair.) It gives me no pleasure in 2008 to observe that we are facing another economic squeeze as our clients do things like cut back on their marketing and IT budgets, and um… go bankrupt. More reputable and better heeled folks than me are also a wee bit concerned....
my nightmare is a spammer's dream →
How long will it be before we start receiving spam hiding under the guise of ‘an important medical alert’?
September 2008
6 posts
online, UXD is one quarter SEO and one quarter IA
Search defines the web. Jakob Nielsen estimates that only 25% of users are traveling through sites via the home pages. If you had any thoughts about ‘forcing’ users through preset paths, it’s time to put them away for good. To be successful in the web medium, I would suggest we need to be simultanously enabling the ability of the search engine bots to crawl and comprehend web...
improving a service firm's "yield"
When people ask me why I believe so firmly in having a defined process for service-oriented firms like interactive agencies, I am now going to point them towards the example of the manufacturing sector. In his fascinating article on the defect issues surrounding the Microsoft Xbox 360, Dean Takahashi tells us: “Console launches are always hurried affairs. Yields — the percentage of working...
spore needs to keep evolving
Spore didn’t want to work with the graphics card in our circa 2006 PC running Windows 2000, though after an hour of digging around online we found a hack to get it to run. It didn’t want to launch on our 2008 PC running Windows Vista, though we’ve found that if we click relentlessly on the error message we get, the game will eventually launch.
(Seriously, guys? If you...
spore and call-in-sick season →
I thought the Spore Creature Creator was a bore, but the actual game is materializing in stores tomorrow, September 7th. I’m looking forward to it, so much so that I went to see about purchasing a copy via the Spore web site. Sure enough, I found a page telling me that…
“Spore is available for order. You can pre-load the PC version in advance, and it will activate on September...
check out the utility bar at the top →
Is it just me, or is the text expander function in the top nav (and the simple, clean way it’s been executed) really, really cool? Hooray for accessibility!
does a raised profile have to mean reduced... →
I understand that Jared Spool has gotten a tremendous amount of career traction from noisy self-promotion. I also note that the individual here being “interviewed” by Spool is simply trying to make a buck sharing her (obvious) knowledge of the IA field, and who can blame her for that?
Still, self promotion from a would-be user advocate has always struck me as a wee bit ironic....
August 2008
4 posts
more, more, more (how do you like it?) from my...
In a previous post along these same lines, I mentioned a desire for a beautiful web site that was text only. A mysterious stranger passed along a link that - while technically maybe not graphics free - is really astounding. I have some quibbles about the functionality. Still, it’s beautiful. I just want two things tonight.
I want fewer ‘awareness’ ads online. I want more ads...
the importance of pain in user-focused design
Organizations don’t adopt user-focused design for their web site(s), applications or products because they think it’s a neat idea. They do it because they’re desperate for a way to differentiate themselves in the marketplace or they’re in acute pain from short-sighted decisions made in the past, decisions made without any real understanding of a site, application or...
collaboration, perspective and (unsexy) role play
Once upon a time, I worked with a management type who insisted upon inserting himself into the UX/creative process. It was his ‘favorite bit.’ I tried to tell him that there was a cordon sanitaire necessary between the account and UX/creative functions of an interactive agency, but it was like I was speaking in a foreign language.
I pointed out that if he was introducing taglines and...