User eXperience and Design. Tips, tricks, or just snippets of my online finds, both praise for a job well done and gripes for shameful behaviour.
I discovered UX (User eXperience) as a discipline in 2002. I had been working with its principles in mind for more than ten years already, and it was a revelation to be told “look, there are books for how you think!”. Since then, I have been constantly learning, working, and expanding on the topic of UX in every aspect of work and life
Time to read: 6 minutesThe premise: I got a contracting gig.
The daunting task: I needed a business account to be paid into!
And of course, everything that I could do wrong, I did very very very wrong indeed. […] continue reading »
Time to read: 5 minutesWhen people ask me what I do, I reply that I make websites. Recently, I’ve been working as a UX freelancer on various projects. What did I really do? […] continue reading »
Time to read: 3 minutesThis week, I didn’t blog. I have 16 drafts sitting in my “drafts” folder, and I’m unwilling to publish any of them. I’ve come to Medium to make amends. […] continue reading »
Time to read: 4 minutesIt’s 2013, and we should no longer be seeing unhelpful error messages. Some common mistakes and practices, with examples of how to make them better. […] continue reading »
Time to read: 2 minutes“An engineer cannot be caught writing poetry.” I was hooked. Artist, Designer and Inventor Bruno Munari wrote one of the most inspiring books on Design. Read it. Really. […] continue reading »
Time to read: 3 minutesWhen a sales person calls me for a decision 15 hours after a visit during which every fourth word was “Sophia”… I run… for the nearest alternative. […] continue reading »
Time to read: 4 minutesThis week, a good friend of mine is releasing a new book. I am dying to read it, and he’s already got a copy for me, which is amazing. Thing is… I’ll never carry a hardcover around now that I have a kindle to read from. And I don’t want to pay double for books […] continue reading »
Time to read: 2 minutesMost designers are perfectionists, and will continue working on something until it’s “just right”. This means we often use up all the time allocated and risk making something completely off the mark, to boot! Show them the post its, I say! Or, in this example, the labels… […] continue reading »
Time to read: 2 minutesI wrote recently about time-boxing, and that got me to thinking that productivity isn’t just about shoving things into a calendar. It’s also about making the most of the time you’ve got, limiting context-switching, and remembering what needs to get done. After quite a bit of pondering, I concluded that my ideal todo list would […] continue reading »
Time to read: 2 minutesWant to build a good brand? These are my top five suggestions for getting it right. If you know there will be an outage in service, warn your affected users, tell them when service will resume. And apologise. It sets expectations, demonstrates you are in control (even if that’s not true), and makes them feel […] continue reading »