Category: Web
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Avoiding Distractions with “The Exorcist”
Khoi just posted a great idea for a desktop application, which he calls Blockwriter: It’s a lean and mean text-writing app that (a) hides all other applications, and (b) allows you to disable email and even all network connectivity completely. The idea is to help people focus on writing tasks by blocking access to all…
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The Scope Creep
“Scope Creep”, also known as “Feature Creep” and “Creeping Featuritis“, is the tendency of development teams to constantly find opportunities to add new features to a product. It is widely considered to be deadly: It’s obviously destructive to project schedules, but adding new features also has an enormous impact on much more than just the…
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IA Summit 2006: The Science (and Pseudo-Science) of Personas
I attended a fascinating IA Summit presentation by Molecular’s Steve Mulder called “Bringing More Science to Persona Creation“. Lately I’ve been pretty interested in how different companies approach user personas, so this was a must-see for me. I was impressed with Steve’s insights into user persona creation, but this was tempered by a fear that,…
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IA Summit 2006: You’re *both* right!
Information architects reaching a sound compromise. One of the most potent themes emerging from the 2006 IA Summit is that on many issues of IA debate it’s possible for both sides to be correct. That is, that you can combine or connect two or more seemingly different design strategies or technolgoies to form a final,…
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IA Summit 2006: Wireframes I & II
Even as we develop more robust wireframing systems, flat printable wireframes are still easy to draft quickly, and easy for clients to consume. Two wireframe sessions in a row were scheduled on Saturday. It’s hard for me to say much about these panels because I have some pretty strong ideas about how to improve the…
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SXSW Confidential, Part 3: Miscellany
Gotta clear out some final SXSW loose ends so I can go on with my life! At least they wont ever change this one, I guess. Virginia Murdoch suggested the creation of a Society for the Preservation of Paul Rand Logos. I could not agree more. I have a message for companies currently sporting a…
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Going to the IA Summit in Vancouver
Less than two weeks after getting back from SXSW, off I go to another conference! Late tonight I’m flying out to the ASIS&T Information Architecture Summit in Vancouver. I was actually on a panel at the 2003 Summit in Portland, but the timing of my business work for the past two years prevented me from…
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SXSW Confidential, Part 2: They Write Books
Three great new books, all of which came out within the last month or so, were hot topics at SXSW 2006. What’s especially exciting to me is that all three of them are about subjects I am deeply interested in, and all of them are written by people I know and respect. I’m reading all…
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SXSW Confidential, Part 1: Old School Social Networking
Once we bought books to help us meet interesting people. Now we join internet social networks. I am not a liveblogger (yet), so my notes from SXSW 2006 are emerging only now, a week later. Over the next few days I’ll be gradually synthesizing my notes and posting a few thoughts about my experiences at…