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Periodically I see mail from people looking for a job. Often it’s more of a general call for work (rather than a specific request for work at our little startup). And often, the people who are calling for work declare their undying passion for user-centered design. They go on to talk about how understanding the […]

Many words are thrown around by user experience professionals to describe what they consider to be the keys to superlative software design. “Simplicity” and “intuitiveness” come to mind. We like both simplicity and intuitiveness, much as we like motherhood and apple pie. But there are less glamorous aspects to a user experience that are fundamental […]

In the left-brained world of software development all problems are nails, and logic and reason are the hammer. It goes something like this: We’re building a new piece of software. We should understand who it’s for so we can build the thing they want. How can you know what to build if you don’t understand […]

Software is a conversation with your users. And yet historically, the “person” talking to you when you use most software is a passive aggressive asshole. Let’s take one of the simplest examples, present on thousands of forms across the world wide web – the submit button. Submit. How does that make you feel? Is the […]

There was a time (and in some people’s minds that time is still today) when people thought of software as a spreadsheet, or a word processor. Or in most cases, with normal human beings, software was something made by geeks that doesn’t really affect their lives in a day-to-day fashion. And even though those of […]