As most people who read a blog like this knows, the new Star Wars film opened to a colossal amount of tickets sold – $250 million in the US, and $500 million dollars worldwide, and that was just during the…
Had the great opportunity to talk to Lauren Ventura for her UX Practitioner series – you can see the interview here – but I also wanted to crosspost the interview here – “for the record”, as it were. To start,…
They’re burying a friend of mine in 12 hours. Her name was Beth. Beth Hill, when I knew her most, and Beth Hill Taylor after she got married. She loved that – the idea that she was, effectively, Elizabeth Taylor.…
I’ve written before about how in Goldfinger, the film that many consider the “Gold Standard” for the series (pun intended), James Bond really doesn’t really do much. He gets captured, he learns about Goldfinger’s plan, and kills Oddjob (he doesn’t…
I’ve worked in the UX discipline for over a decade now, and have been on a number of projects both large and small. One of the skills I’ve picked up in that time is pattern recognition, which helps me create…
I realized a few days ago I had a couple of pretty good stories that I had never written up. One, involving Richard Simmons, I will not recount until he passes away (dead people can’t sue). The other, involving the…
As someone who has been in the user experience domain for a LOOONG time, I have had lots of conversations with many different executives. And, most of the time, these execs knew how to spell “UX”, but they didn’t know much…
Crosspost from http://www.trekmovie.com (and please check out the… interesting comments to this post there.) At last month’s official Star Trek Convention in Las Vegas, I had the privilege to speak about “Treknology”. The experience was great – I was thrilled at the…
“We are locally optimistic, and globally pessimistic.” That statement is a key point made in the book Abundance: the Future is Better than you think by Pete Diamandis and Steven Kotler. The quote is from one of the many people…
I’m a big fan of Penn and Teller, and have been for many years. I saw them live for the first time last month and was blown away at their performance. They were, and are, incredibly entertaining, and if you…
I’ve worked on a lot of different projects in my career, and I’ve learned quite a bit. I’ve always said I’d rather learn from someone else’s mistakes instead of my own, but I’ve had ample opportunity to learn from my…
I had a great chat with several colleagues at a social event recently, and when I meet new people they usually ask “what do you do?” A very simple question to answer, but what and how people respond is quite…
I’ve been in several meetings where the words “high level design” was bandied about by designers and stakeholders. The importance of a high level design… well, it was unquestioned. A high level design was absolutely vital, to ensure the success…
I’m going home. They say home is where your heart is, and that’s exactly right. My heart is with my family, and they aren’t here. They’re in my house in Dacula, Georgia, just northeast of Atlanta. Me? Well, for the…
Ignorance is definitely bliss. After a lovely, leisurely lunch with some friends today, I grew nostalgic. I thought back to my college days, to when I was doing college radio. I thought about the friends I made when I worked…
I’m fighting with Adobe. Not literally, obviously – I’m not having physical altercations with a multinational corporation. I’m fighting with thier apps, specifically InDesign. And InDesign is winning. The thing is, it shouldn’t be. I’ve used page layout programs for…