Posts in Making Things Special

We do this all the time in life. We start with a broad idea and make it more specific. It’s natural. It’s normal. It’s healthy. “Want to go out? Food or a movie? What type of food? Which restaurant? What night? What time? Where will we meet? What should we order? etc.” And yet, when […]

Less is more. Everyone says this. It’s now a cliche. OK. But it bears repeating, and understanding. One of the secret advantages of making software in these modern times is the ability to ship that software to real customers early and often. Those users are a treasure trove of explicit and implicit feedback helping you […]

One thing you constantly need to concern yourself with as a User Experience Designer is the “cognitive load” at every point in your experience. “Cognitive Load” is a fancy term for how much thinking the user has to do to parse through all the crap you’ve jammed onto the screen in front of them. “Less […]

If you have a consumer software product and you charge money for it, you should have a visible, toll-free, tech support number on every page. I’m not sure how to state this more plainly. Your job in creating a great customer experience is to make the customer happy, not to lower your support costs. Lowering […]

The hallmark of the software professional is that they often see a world where technology has almost infinite capacity to improve our lives. Software can’t put food on a plate, but it can help calculate the most efficient way to grow and distribute the food. Software can’t give us a hug (yet), but it can […]