Guidelines Done Right: Microsoft Metro
I’m working on apps for three platforms at the moment: Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android, and Microsoft’s Metro. Because the three are similar yet different in critical ways, I’ve had to refer to the respective UX guidelines for each several times in the past few weeks. Wihtout equivocation, and with some surprise, I can report that ...
A New Project: Designing a Windows 8 (Metro) App
I’m excited to report that I’m currently working on an app for the new Windows 8 OS. As a lifelong Mac user and avid iOS fan, it’s nonetheless exciting to be designing for a totally new platform like Windows 8, with its unique visual language that eschews skeumorphism, and innovative wayfinding schemas. The timeline is ...
Users Are Humans
In the healthcare space, they’re called patients. In the commerce space, they’re called customers. In the professional services space, they’re called clients. But when we’re talking about how they interact with our digital systems and products, we suddenly start calling them ‘users.’ Heck, my field is called User Experience. But let’s think about that first ...
The UX is Broken: Here’s Why
Most of the time, a broken user experience has little to do with the design or implementation of the UX itself. Scrape the surface of even the smallest problems, and you’ll usually find: A broken product A broken organization A broken set of priorities Some combination of the above All too often, our job as UX ...
RIP Hillman Curtis
I was saddened this morning to learn of the untimely passing of Hillman Curtis. Hillman was a true Web pioneer, a digital adventurer. He was someone who saw the potential of the Internet when others saw only limitations. For those of us who were building the Web in the mid- and late-90s, Hillman showed us ...
What I’m Reading: April 19, 2012
Here are some items I recently read and recommend. Matt Gemmell describes what makes an interface attractive (to him, at least) in this article entitled Augmented Paper. Curious about the difference between Adaptive and Responsive web / mobile design? Here are two articles that might help clear things up…or not: Adaptive vs. Responsive, What’s the Difference? ...
Sparrow: a Minimalist Review
If you, like me, feel that Apple Mail is suffering from feature bloat, getting slower and more unwieldy with each new release, Sparrow might be the minimalist alternative you’re looking for. Sparrow allows you to focus on email without distractions. As such, it foregoes some niceties (and even some must-haves), but after using it for ...
The Tweet Hereafter
Making progress on the designs for my experimental project with Jamie Forrest, The Tweet Hereafter.
My Autism App: A Setback
Unfortuantely, my plans to develop a simple Web- and app-based autism evaluation tool for concerned parents has hit a snag: the American Psychiatric Association denied my request to use their DSM criteria for autism as the basis for the tool. However, hope is not lost: I have some ideas about how I might incorporate other ...
Re-imagining the Autism Spectrum Diagram
The term “autism spectrum” is a bit of a misnomer, as it’s not actually spectrum in a linear sense at all. In this post on my other blog, I illuminate how I’ve tackled the problem and hopefully created a more accurate, easier to understand diagram explaining where an individual might be on the so-called autism ...
It’s Not Peanut Butter
In the late 90s I was working with a web producer (remember those?) who insisted on saying, “JIF.” I finally snapped. “It’s GIF, not JIF! It stands for Graphics Interchange Format. Note the word is ‘graphics,’ not ‘giraffics.’” To which he wisely replied, “Who cares?” He’s absolutely right. Nonetheless, watching this cute video about the ...
User Testing on the Subway
On the subway this morning, I spied a passenger playing a sudoku app on his iPhone. At the risk of disturbing him (and winding up with a broken nose), I said, “Pardon me, but I see you’re playing a sudoku app. Would you mind looking at one I’m developing for the iPad?” “Sure!” he said. ...
What Was I Thinking?
The other day I found a page from a 20-year-old old sketchbook, and for the life of me I can’t remember why I was sketching a portrait and a cartoon spaceman on the same sheet of paper.
