Expensify's marketing reminds me of YUCK, not WIN.
5 March 2013
Expensify is pretty good software. At a previous job I tried getting our accounting department to use it, but apparently they preferred to make me print out their sadistic and...
MSFT usability disasters: Ignoring results
20 November 2012
I recently questioned whether executives, CEOs, and some product managers are even able to truly listen to the findings of user research. Quite a few of them, I've seen,...
Groupon is hiring UX people, all levels, all functions.
19 July 2011
All roles can be in our Palo Alto product / development office or in our Chicago HQ. We're looking for people in all roles who have a strong grounding in...
Damn the metrics, full speed ahead!
12 May 2011
A/B testing is useful, important, and a valuable part of the software production process. (Note that I didn't say part of the "design" process.) You can use A/B testing to...
LinkedIn Today: Congrats to LI UED members...
10 March 2011
LinkedIn just launched LinkedIn Today, its social news aggregator for professionals. Props to the members of the LI UED team who have been hammering away at this for the past...
My Design Principles
18 November 2010
This list is based on the original Google design team's UI principles, which I helped draft in 2004-ish. Google updated its UI principles and published them around 2008, when Irene...
Happy Diwali from LinkedIn!
5 November 2010
Had my first launch at LinkedIn yesterday. It's a custom homepage, visible in India, that wishes viewers a happy Diwali from different LinkedIn employees. Happy Diwali LinkedIn blog post. We...
Collaboration and Crowdsourcing
6 February 2010
The system is what the user makes of it -- the system is what the user brings to it. That's the essence of social sites, compared to crowdsourced sites. Crowdsourcing...
Customer support is part of user experience...
5 February 2010
UPDATE: I have found where the nerds have discussed such things: StackOverflow which I --- Which is why at work I'm taking on the (currently not-unmanageable) job of responding to...
In search of books on mobile usability & UI...
27 January 2010
Recalling CMU intro HCI course whose capstone project was UI improvements for the PalmOS.... Here's the question on Quora, but haven't yet gotten much of a response: http://www.quora.com/q/What_are_the_best_fresh_up_to_date_academic_type_resources_for_mobile_UI_UX_design...
Published: Thoughts on Interaction Design
30 March 2007
Jon Kolko, who I met at CMU, just published his book Thoughts on Interaction Design. I'm a guest author and wrote a chapter called "Getting Design Done". The book's website...
NYTimes: User hacking leading to product innovation
28 March 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/25/business/yourmoney/25Proto.html?_r=1&oref=slogin Summary: Let advanced users hack on your products. They will come up with innovations that you didn't think of. This stands up nicely to an economic interpretation too: If...
Google Base Store Connector
5 October 2006
The other day we launched the Google Base Store Connector. The progression to the final version was pretty neat. When I started working on the project there was a functional...
Software specs are not the enemy.
29 August 2006
The fact that a lot of organizations cram unreasonable, un-vetted features into the spec and call it a "spec" is not a problem with specs. It is an organizational problem. Blaming the existence of specs for problems caused by bad management is not fair to the spec.
PRD for my home remodel
5 May 2006
Sitting down with my architect this weekend to make decisions about kitchen cabinets, countertops, sink, and how the stairs will work. The kitchen will be monolithic charcoal gray (or maybe...
Pironimo.net
25 March 2006
Pironimo.net is a twiki installation that I deployed, customized, and maintain for a small community of friends (around 30 people). It began on another server in September 2002. Since then...
Placement of Toto Washlet controls relative to toilet
22 July 2004
At work we have a bunch of Toto washlets. One day I was explaining to some friends about the wall-attached remote control. One of them, in annoyed puzzlement, asked why...