Writing
Today our electoral college, our last line in defense of fascism will officially elect a fascist dictator to the US presidency. Our country is on the precipice of its final destruction as a democracy. An authoritarian regime is about to take over. One so completely divorced from democracy that they
Writing
The Coronalvirus has caused an enormous amount of rescheduling and various delays to the publishing supply chains. My publisher is redesigning the book launch for Volume II of the Goldberg Variations, The Redemption of the Damned, to be virtual, if necessary. The good news is I can do book readings,
Design
In a sad day for most digital products and services, an italian economist, Vilfredo Pareto, observed that 80% of Italy’s wealth was owned by 20% of the population. From that economic observation has come a torrent of the most far flung interpretations of a non-existent 80-20 rule. There is
Design
Heuristics are excellent assistance in identifying potential problems with a given user interface design. The trouble lies when people come to rely on these as the sole input, that somehow they can come and overtake the more rigorous and far more accurate methods of evaluation. So please don’t read
Design
This weeks post is a review of the book Measuring the User Experience by Tom Tullis and Bill Albert. From time to time other book reviews will follow. Why a book review The current state of books on UX is deplorable. Many UX books can’t make up their mind
Design
(Adapted from a previous editorial I wrote for interactions Magazine) This editorial is from a controversial issue on measuring usability. This special issue covered CIF usability testing (a seemingly innocuous if important topic). Upon publication many took strong esxception to our coverage of CIF testing. But perhaps these critics also
Design
This editorial is from a controversial issue on measuring usability. This special issue covered CIF usability testing (a seemingly innocuous if important topic). Upon publication many took strong esxception to our coverage of CIF testing. But perhaps these critics also took exception to our criticizing a practice all too often
Design
A series on prototyping In the 10 years since my book on prototyping first came on the scene there was precious little written about the professional way to prototype. Today prototyping seems to be the hot topic, unfortunately most of the current stuff available on the internet only give an
Design
In my last post I discussed what a prototype does. Now here comes a far trickier question: what is a prototype. A prototype turns out to be quite complex, and rightly so. Because to get the benefits of prototyping (the subject of my next post), a prototyper must understand these
Design
In Part 1 of what is a prototype we discussed many dimensions of what a prototype is, but this covers only part of the story, actually half there are many more layers of complexity and if you do not understand them, instead of controlling a prototype, the prototype will control
Design
Professionalism seems to be an amorphous concept in the UX profession. And why not, it seems anyone with an unembarassing resume can get a UX job doing the most unqualified work imaginable. Luckily, rarely does anyone outside of UX really know when someone is doing a bad job. This is