Reflect and Resolve

The act of being a professional designer is a process of iteration in itself — demanding ongoing feedback from peers & clients, of course, but also continuous critical self-examination, guided by an attitude of optimistic, if somewhat grudging, improvement. Design is an art of improving things — changing existing situations into preferred ones, as Herb […]

Great prototyping resources

** From Andrei Herasimchuk of Involution Studios, a thoroughly detailed chart of various prototyping tools with a criteria breakdown for when to use which tool for which kind of product (web, RIA, kiosk, mobile, etc.) you are designing for: http://make.involutionstudios.com/conceptcar/ ** From Dave Cronin of Cooper, a superb article summarizing various prototyping approaches, with linked […]

A team of rivals: digital product development

The popular phrase of the last 8 weeks, since Barack Obama’s historic election and swift announcement of cabinet picks (in particular, Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State, and keeping Robert Gates at Defense) has been “team of rivals”, from Doris Kearns Goodwin’s best-selling book about Lincoln’s cabinet (which I just started reading– it’s quite fascinating). […]

What do you want to learn?

I had a good conversation with the Apple Online Store’s creative director last week over some fresh hand-made pizza at Apple’s cafeteria (apparently it’s Steve’s favorite :-) I agree, quite tasty yet not heavy). We met awhile back when I was at Oracle and he’s a Valley veteran (Claris, Adobe, Yahoo, etc. whew!) so he’s […]

Challenges to a new design initiative

Per my prior experiences at Cisco and BEA Systems in particular, where I was part of major efforts to establish a user experience program and design process/approach overall… There are many difficulties on the road to design goodness in the corporate realm, but rather than a tedious laundry list, the challenges are best summarized by […]