I check my blog analytics pretty regularly. I like to know how many people are visiting, coming from where, for how long, reading what, etc. My keyword activity, the search terms that lead people to my blog, is particularly interesting and hilarious. I realize that I have a sultry blog title, and as a result [Keep Reading…]
Gel conference videos now online
Not everyone has the chance to attend Gel — it’s pricey and not directly related to the work we do so it can be hard to justify to managers who control your professional development budget. It’s billed as an “inspirational” conference similar to TED, but with a specific focus: creating good experiences (Gel stands for [Keep Reading…]
10 Most Common Misconceptions About User Experience Design
A couple months ago, the lovely Sharon Feder asked me if I would be interested in being a guest writer for Mashable. As I’m sure you can imagine, I jumped at the chance. I’ve been a fan of Mashable for a long, long time and kind of always hoped I’d get to write for them. [Keep Reading…]
In 2008, You Changed Me
In the past year, my life has turned upside down. It was more than I ever wanted and everything I needed. And it happened because of all of the amazing people whom I just happened to cross paths with, whom I sought out, who sought me out, who were introduced to me, or whom I [Keep Reading…]
Data Visualization Inspiration
In the spirit of sharing responses to Twitter questions (see last post on business cards), I wanted to post the list of resources that were sent to me when I asked the following question: I’m working on a project that will probably need to show trend data and since I’m beginning to work on the [Keep Reading…]
IDEA Conference 2008: Day 2
This is a continuation of my coverage from the IDEA Conference in Chicago from October 7-8, 2008. My Day 1 roundup can be found here. The speakers from Day 2 were Chris Crawford, Alberto Cañas, Jason Fried, Aradhana Goel, Bill DeRouchey and Andrew Hinton. Let’s get right to it… Chris Crawford: “Linguistic User Interfaces” Chris [Keep Reading…]
IDEA Conference 2008: Day 1
I’m finally getting a chance to post the roundups of my tweets at the IDEA conference in Chicago, October 7-8, 2008. It was an incredible two days of high-level thinking and insights. Not necessarily material that you can apply to your every day work — not suggestions on how to create better looking documentation or [Keep Reading…]
Marketing e-mails that actually help customers
If you’ve read this blog for long enough or follow me on Twitter, it should be no surprise that I’ve tried online dating. Many years ago in college, I signed up for Match.com, but my membership expired about three years ago. So imagine my surprise to get an e-mail from them the other day. The [Keep Reading…]
The outpouring of love for Randy Pausch
When I found out yesterday morning that Randy Pausch had passed away the night before, I felt a wave of regret pour over me. For the things I never said. Like: “Thank you for showing me that my purpose in life is to make other people’s lives better.” That would have been a good start. [Keep Reading…]
Randy Pausch loses battle with pancreatic cancer at 47
For those of you who have never heard of Randy Pausch, he was a much admired professor at Carnegie Mellon (my alma mater), and became world-renowned for his “Last Lecture” delivered last September in which he emphatically discussed how to really achieve all of your childhood dreams (he did!). Pausch was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer [Keep Reading…]
