CUT TO: INT. SCREEN SHARING MEETING – DAY A client shows their consultant the progress they’ve made on a redesign. They want the consultant’s feedback before it’s too late. CLIENT Currently the user does A, then B, then C. Now the user will be able to do C, then A, then B. We don’t think [Keep Reading…]
Archives for 2012
UX and The Lawsuit
So you may have heard that Apple and Samsung are suing each other. I hate when mommy and daddy fight. In general, this lawsuit really irks me. Patents are outdated, both sides are being petty bullies, and customers are the ones who are going to suffer. I was wishing it would all just go away [Keep Reading…]
You Are What You Ink
I just turned down a lucrative contract because in my heart I’m ethically opposed to the company’s corporate owners. When I was first contacted by their director of engineering, I had a negative gut feeling that it just “wasn’t me,” but I put off the concern in an effort to challenge my assumptions. I wanted [Keep Reading…]
Knowing Why Beats Knowing How
Last year around this time, I started following an eating plan called The 4-Hour Body by Tim Ferriss. At the same time, I was feverishly traveling the globe presenting my talk Design Principles: The Philosophy of UX. Midway through the book, Tim begins a chapter with a quotation from Ralph Waldo Emerson that draws a [Keep Reading…]
User Research War Stories: “Taking empathy to a whole new level”
My friend Steve Portigal, an esteemed customer research consultant in the Bay Area, has a series on his blog titled “War Stories” — anecdotes from ethnographic researchers about the craziest things that have happened to them in the field. One entry from Priya Sohoni is particularly striking. Titled “Taking empathy to a whole new level,” [Keep Reading…]
Whitney Hess is raising $30K for Farm Aid for her 30th birthday
There is only one thing I want for my 30th birthday: to save America’s farms. That’s why I’m raising $30K for Farm Aid. Something that many people may not know about me is that I’m a locavore – the vast majority of the food that I eat is locally grown and produced. This means I [Keep Reading…]
Hugs in the workplace lead to greater empathy
How often do you get hugged at work? How often do you give them? Paul Zak, a professor of economics and director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, CA, is conducting a study that shows that Oxytocin, the chemical released by hugs and many other positive interpersonal interactions, increases [Keep Reading…]
If Seth Godin were me…
Is Seth Godin reading my blog? His piece last week titled “If I were you…” is a booming echo of my mantra “The user is not like me“: “If I were you…” But of course, you’re not. And this is the most important component of strategic marketing: we’re not our customer. Godin has written a [Keep Reading…]
Constructing Your Personal User Interface on Harvard Business Review
The inspiring Whitney Johnson invited me to contribute to her latest post on Harvard Business Review, titled Constructing Your Personal User Interface. Published yesterday, the piece takes five of my principles for designing user experiences and shows how they apply not only to human-computer interaction but to human-human interaction as well. There’s already a great [Keep Reading…]
The User Is Not Like Me
The user is not like me. August 25, 2003. It was the first day of my senior year at Carnegie Mellon University. It was the day I learned the mantra that would shape my career. The user is not like me. Words uttered by Bonnie John, my professor of 05-410 Introduction to HCI Methods (now [Keep Reading…]
