May 2010
11 posts
2 tags
undoing unwittingly bad design
Don Norman has a section in The Design of Everday Things where he mentions an interesting principle that I’ve never thought deeply about, and violate all the time. The basic point? Make instructions absolutely clear and simple. Case in point?
On the Gentleman’s Guide I called the email subscription section “Electronic post” and had the button to subscribe labeled...
3 tags
too many identities
I signed up for one of the upcoming AVC.com meetups today, and noticed that my picture on meetup is different than the one I use on: twitter, facebook, disqus (through gravatar), wordpress, and tumblr. More than that, each of those sites has a different set of credentials (not to mention various email and ecommerce accounts). If I ever want to change that identity at the same time, I have to go...
3 tags
design of my everyday things
Lots of good reading over the past few days, from the four steps to the epiphany to the design of everyday things. Together, the two give me a lot to think about with regards to how I design things, and makes me see the things I have built in the past in a new light.
During my last job, I was responsible for overseeing our tech group in the creation of a productivity/workflow tracking and...
3 tags
its only just a matter of trust
I had breakfast yesterday with Robin Tyrangiel, who is making the very bold move of moving to beijing first, learning chinese second, and figuring out how to start a business and make money third.
In any case, our conversation turned to facebook and trust issues, as most conversations about technology inevitably do these days. What I thought crystallized in this conversation, though, was the...
2 tags
oh, that's here?
A visit to the national portrait gallery had me thinking about art again, specifically with regard to its evolution from rarified artifact that only a select few would ever see, to mass produced image accessible to the world (obviously not all pieces are so, but let’s stick with paintings and photography for the moment).
I was walking down the hall in the gallery, and walked right past...
piracy and hollywood
The last couple of years have played host to a huge push by the MPAA and other Hollywood organizations designed to decry the impact of piracy on their business models. Through constant and repeated claims regarding the malicious effect of piracy on studio bottom lines, and on the income of everyone involved in the creation of a movies, and with not insignificant lobbying, the MPAA has had a lot of...
new york tech meetup: thoughts
I went to NYTM last night, and I can’t get what I said to Adam Ludwig a few weeks ago out of my head: “From what I understand, it used to be a great networking event, now it’s more show and tell.” And that’s what it was last night.
While some of the demos last night were really interesting and cool (gamechanger jumps out in a big way, as does seatgeek), the event as...
qa and the lean start up model
My last job gave me a good lesson on the difficulties of deploying new products to an active user base. It taught me the value of letting developers design their environment ahead of time, and of listening to them when deciding what would be extensible over the long run, as opposed to just dealing with the immediate problem and baking in a bad system. It also taught me the incredible value of...
blog as conversational space
I’m still thinking about the impact of users on products and the necessity of active users in the creation of a viable product. Right now, though, I’m thinking about it from the perspective of pure community creation, as it relates to blogs vs. traditional media forms.
The advantages offered by blogs does not get maximized through abundance of opinions on its own, nor as a function of...
confluence of communication
I was at the MOMA earlier today, at the Marina Abramovic exhibit, and it got me thinking a bit about the similarities between performance art and the current wave of “2.0” communication/social tools.
Many of these tools are defined by an increase in user participation and development: our interaction is, in fact, critical to the way they work and whether or not they succeed. That is...
