Category: Best Practices

  • The right question to ask when solving a problem: Why? (not Who?)

    a wise friend of mine once told me when there is a problem you can ask WHO or WHY? WHO is about blame. “Who messed up? Who is at fault? Who should we fire?” but WHY is about learning “Why did this happen? Why didn’t we notice? Why don’t we check for that?” … WHY…

  • Social Patterns II: The Social Interfacening…

    Social Patterns II: The Social Interfacening…

    It’s starting to feel like time to update ye old Designing Social Interfaces, so Erin Malone and I are talking to the kind editors at O’Reilly about doing a second edition. Because user experience, we are doing some research, including a survey. If you work with social interfaces, apps, websites, or experiences, please consider taking…

  • It’s the users who are mobile

    It’s the users who are mobile

    Still playing catch-up. I wrote this guest blog post for the Hightail blog about eleven months ago, before some of my pals, um… hightailed it to greener pastures. It’s the clearest statement I’ve made yet about both the “tablet first” and “holistic ubiquitous user experience” approach we’ve been taking at CloudOn, so I am going…

  • Tablet First: Designing holistic ubiquitous experiences

    Mobility today means more than handsets in pockets. We are entering a world of ubiquitous network access to always-on cross-channel digital services, bringing multiple new dimensions of complexity to the job of user experience strategy and product design.

  • Designing Interfaces, second edition (by Jenifer Tidwell)

    Designing Interfaces, second edition (by Jenifer Tidwell)

    In Chapter 9 of the long-awaited new edition of Tidwell’s seminal Designing Interfaces: Patterns for Effective Interaction Design, she includes a kind shout-out to Designing Social Interfaces (on page 394, “What This Chapter Does Not Cover”).

  • Designing for Play (updated for Web Directions @media)

    I gave the latest version of my Designing for Play talk at the @media conference (now run by the amazing John Allsopp / Maxine Sherrin team famed for their other fantastic Web Directions events) in London two weeks ago and was very pleased with the comments and feedback I got. The sage Scott Berkun even…