The Minimum Viable Product is the rule in the start-up community, and like all rules, it’s under attack […]
Getting the V right
My Year of Living
As I’ve written before, instead of resolutions I usually pick a subject and spend the year studying it. […]
Farming and Knitting
I don’t get Farmville either. Like you, I tried it out and found it painfully boring. I liked […]
A Syllabus for User Experience
When I agreed to teach a class on User experience Design at General Assembly, I had a very […]
Find Your North Star
I don’t think there is one of us today that doesn’t know of the north star, and that […]
Design as Mangement
What gets measured, gets managed. –Peter Drucker Companies that identify, measure and manage key customer behaviors are […]
A Mission for Design
I was invited to say a few off-the-cuff words at a design offsite for a Well Established Company […]
Don’t Kill Your Channels
A channel is a way you can reach your users. It can be email, notifications, stories in a Facebook stream or even […]
Designers Don’t Ask
This is the original article that became “Design Can’t be an Afterthought” on Women 2.0. I’ve left the original title, […]
Your Number
A designer friend sat across the table from me. I took a sip of my wine, she crunched […]
Words on Wireframes
Design is a Job should be required reading for anyone making a living doing Design. I will write […]
Still one of the best resources for what research to do when
When Gabe and I researched, wrote and designed the Carbon IQ User Centered Design Methods Guide, I felt […]
We Have Met the Enemy, and It’s Not Us
This was inspired by an exchange with a friend who is a consultant, and can’t stand the idea […]
Tiny Process for Writing
First Draft: say everything quickly. race to the end! Second Draft: replace pronouns with nouns, explain vagaries. Third […]
Where you been at, Wodtke?
I’ve been in a five week culinary program. I’m in week three. Everything is starting to break down… […]
Tell Me a Little Bit About Yourself
Everyone should know how to introduce themselves to a prospect. You can be a designer on an interview, […]
A Language for Design Problems
[T]here are known knowns; there are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns; that is […]
A small manifesto for design
Disclaimer: I have made digital products for over ten years in a variety of roles, from the formal […]
Bruce Lee on how to be a Designer (ok, on how to fight, but watch…)
“I do not teach karate. I do not believe in styles anymore. …Styles tends to not only separate […]
Lessons from Game Design; Citations and References
I’m sorry I did not record the talk. But here are the slides No Stinking Badges: Better Lessons […]
Working the Canvas, Reworking our Process
When I was in art school, one of the most important ideas I learned was called “working the canvas.” It meant never spending too much time on one area, but continually moving from one part to the next, so you are slowly building up a complete picture. You can see it in the movie below taken from the nifty ipad app Brushes, that lets you make a film of your painting creation process.
A Letter to the Newly Minted Designer
“The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing” Archilochus You just graduated. Or maybe you have a […]
Advice on Writing From Everybody
Okay, maybe not everybody, I’ve been reading a lot about writing, when not reading fairy tales (I’m working on a […]
Conflating Sturgeon’s Law
“I repeat Sturgeon’s Revelation, which was wrung out of me after twenty years of wearying defense of science […]
How to Design
Design like Thomas Keller cooks: “Cooking is not about convenience, and it’s not about shortcuts. Take your time. […]
Compassionate Design
Designers have all had the mantra of user-centeredness beaten into them. But how many apply that same understanding […]
Consistency is a Tactic
Often, when critiquing a design, I ask how a designer came to make a certain decisions. Too often […]
The Law of Conservation of Complexity
The next time you are having a big argument about design with fellow team members, and decide to […]
Why You Should Speak
At conferences and meet-ups, I spend a lot of time with young practitioners. And every time I chat […]
Lolly, Lolly, Lolly Get Your Adverbs Here
One of the most flumoxing issues I encounter when reviewing design work is misplaced interface objects.
When you craft a sentence, you’d never think to write something like “Fluorescent, she picked a red.” Somewhere or another you learned that — unless the lady in question was glowing faintly — “fluorescent” should be placed next to “red” to modify it.
Yet over and over I’ll see a design where a filter or an undo button is off in a corner, far from the thing it is supposed to filtering or undoing. I’ll hear a designer say, “well users can be trained.”
But think about that sentence again… you were able to guess the red was fluorescent, but it stopped you in your tracks, didn’t it? Design’s job is to disappear into the pleasure of use.
Next time you review a design, consider treating interface objects as if they were verbs (or adverbs) and figure out what word they affect. Then read your sentence out loud and see if it makes sense!