Category: User experience, web, technology

  • A Method for Coaching for Performance at Work

    Once upon a time, in a company in a far off land, there was a User Experience team led by Alice. Alice was mentoring Bob, a design researcher who was only a couple of years into the field. Bob had been working hard in preparation for a presentation of the latest round of research, and…

  • My toolset for digital sketching: Wacom One and Sketchbook Pro

    My toolset for digital sketching: Wacom One and Sketchbook Pro

    Background Before the COVID-19 pandemic, I worked in an office with 2 wall-sized whiteboards and carried notebooks and pens with me. I diagrammed many times a week, in meetings and in private as a thinking exercise. I’ve been working this way for all of my professional life, and I have a long background in user…

  • Budgeting for UX Managers

    Budgeting for UX is a conflict of mental models: Ours and Accounting’s. If we start with Accounting’s model, we’re more likely to make mistakes. So, do the version that makes sense first, and then reformulate it for Accounting’s needs.

  • Oblique Strategies, a creative tool, in a web version

    Oblique Strategies, a creative tool, in a web version

    In Oct 2022 I made a web-based derivative of Eno and Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies cards. I read about a deck of cards made by musician Brian Eno and artist Peter Schmidt in 1975, which had the purpose of spurring on creative thinking by inserting a random prompt. I imagine Eno composing music in some endless…

  • Frequency of Error is Important in User Interface

    (I published this in 2020, but it had been sitting as a draft since 2015. I presume this error set from Microsoft may not be relevant, although the idea could be.) Late last week, right after I stopped running with scissors, I picked up a Microsoft Surface 3 tablet running Windows 10. Over the weekend…

  • Vacationing near Munising, MI today

  • Organizational Physics OmniGraffle Stencil

    Here’s an OmniGraffle stencil based on Lex Sisney’s Organizational Physics.

  • Does design precede strategy?

    More than any other type of worker, earnest designers and design researchers wrangle with real strategy formulation, often blazing a trail for a company and its management.

  • “Click Here,” MS Outlook, Seriously?

    “Click here” is at best a hint for folks who are befuddled by text that is blue and underlined. It is needlessly redundant. When you are tempted to use it, revise your language, and we’ll all be better off. Microsoft has carelessly provided us this example.

  • Five-Time Inc. 5000 Honoree: Covenant Eyes

    While I don’t often write about work on my blog, I’m happy to share the news that Covenant Eyes made the Inc. 5000 list again this year, now having made it 5 times since 2010. Congratulations Covenant Eyes on pursuing your worthy mission with successful business practices! And while not an official award, Glassdoor.com shows…