PLAN FOR IMPROVISATION

Overall I love my Toyota Prius. Under the hood, it is an engineering marvel. Prius' have been around for 10 years and still sell like hotcakes.  I honestly don't understand why Ford hasn't made a competing product by now. I have come to realize that I pay attention to design more than the average person. I hate it when simple design mistakes ruin an overall well designed product. The interior of my Prius has some obvious problems that could have easily been fixed had they asked the right questions. Separation of Concerns Is there any reason they needed to put the door lock/unlock button between the buttons that operate the windows?   The buttons feel different - therefore its not likely that I'm going to press the wrong button. However, nearly every time I want to use one one of the buttons I have to take my eyes off the road and look at the buttons to choose the correct one or I have to feel each one to get the correct one. This simply violates the principa...

Anybody who has worked with me knows that I'm a fan of analytics. If you are selling soap or software development services, I strongly believe you should be capturing metrics on how people use and interact with your product. As such, I have Google Analytics on my blog. I have learned quite a few things about my content over the past few years. #1 Short blog posts are the most popular. #2 However, the longer multi-part ones engage users more #3 Good content draws people in. Of the people who stay on my blog for more than 10 minutes - which is a long time in the web -, half come in through the top 5 posts. The top 5 posts are: Boarding Pass - You're doing it wrong How to Interview and Hire a Good Project Manager Effective vs Efficient Teams Principled Leadership Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule ...not in the top 5, but one of my favorite posts... Systematic Amateurism Patterns of traffic Usage: 10% of traffic comes to the site and reads the blog...

I don't like to re-post, but I highly recommend reading this. Tablets are, finally , not going to go away and will only increase in usage. Jakob Nielsen does a great job of discussing the usability and design of 7-inch tablets. Then he talks about the future of 7-inch tablets based on the market and design choices required to ensure their future. http://www.useit.com/alertbox/kindle-fire-usability.html