CodeCamp 2011 slides

Today I had a fabulous time presenting to approx 200 attendees at the Silicon Valley CodeCamp at Foothill College, about fundamentals of good UI design, and then also about partnering with designers to deliver great products. Thanks to all who attended, and your questions/debates! :-)

As promised I’ve posted the (sanitized) slides; I had to remove some stuff from my past clients / projects… Please see below:

(FYI, for some reason, Google Chrome doesn’t read the PDF; have to right-click and save, or use Firefox and do same thing, right-click and save the file…sorry!)

** Fundamentals of Good UI Design PDF (23 MB)

** Partnering with a Designer PDF (13 MB)

One more thing…

That’s what I wanted to hear when I heard the sad news. Just one more thing. That he’s not really gone. That it was just a bad hoax or incorrectly tweeted news item. Just one more tiny, fragile, ever-so-delicate hope that he did have decades more, as he reflected upon in his memorable Stanford address, to continue innovating not just “cool tech”, but upon our daily lifestyles, cultural attitudes toward technology, business models and media ecosystems. Just one more chance to push the conventional boundaries of possibility and inspire and educate us about how to breathe joy, delight, and humanity into the technologies we use. Just one more moment to hear a rousing, superlative-rich exultation of a new digital wonder beautifully and elegantly designed “for the rest of us”. Just one more spark to ignite our own desires and passions and ideas to create a better world for generations, by truly bridging the disparate but essential worlds of liberal arts & technology, as he had proven many times over. Just one more glimpse… to see this gifted visionary signal the promise of something that we will love, that we didn’t even know we needed, defying expectations and inspiring us to rise to a new challenge. And he kept raising that bar so damn high ;-)

Alas, there will no longer be “one more thing”…

Except this – One more thing, Uncle Steve. Thank you. For everything.

Interview tips for UI Prototypers

Recently we’ve been interviewing for some UI Prototyper openings on the Citrix Product Design team (please ping me if truly interested :-). This has brought to everyone’s minds certain things that enable a successful interview and portfolio review…

** First and foremost, show up genuinely interested, passionate, curious about the opportunity. Also, please do some homework about the company’s products and latest news. Just 30 minutes on Google and social news sites is all we ask – it’s not that hard. Arrive prepared to ask and learn more. That stuff really does matter, even for a UI Prototyper. We want interested teammates!

** Prototypers should be prepared to show & describe their process clearly, show any experiments that failed, and articulate lessons learned. The best prototypers draw and mock up stuff too. Or “sketch with code”. Show us! (within the limits of NDAs of course)

** As a bonus, show us relevant stuff done on your own time, as personal projects or hobbies. We love to get a full balance of pertinent skills and projects that get you excited, so we can better assess the role fit.

** Tell us the story about your prototypes, don’t just click through and say “And then we shipped it”. More useful for us: Tell us your main roles, the choices made, key issues surfaced, how your prototypes addressed them (or didn’t), the impact on overall project and user studies, and timeframe too! Was it a one week throwaway to convince a VP, or a full-blown 3 month effort to define the final spec?

** This goes for anyone interviewing, but don’t assume anything. Be explicit about the problem attempted to solve, the context, goals, constraints, etc. Even if it’s for a super well-known brand like Yahoo or YouTube, framing the problem is always a good thing for your interviewers.

** Explain technical methods used and also WHY: performance boosts (any stats? comparisons?), ease of refactoring, modularity of code, etc. What are the pros/cons, risks, issues, etc. Please don’t just say, “And here I used CSS3 selector blah blah”. Why? What benefits achieved?

** Describe approaches to triangulating amongst Design, Dev, and Research all together… prototyping for tests vs quick explorations, vs handing code to Dev.  What challenges were faced and how were they handled?

** Perhaps the most critical keys to success for a UI Prototyper are communication and chemistry with the team. What do you do to enable that, and how do you respond when things break down a bit?

 

There’s many more, but these are the major points that should lead to a successful portfolio review and interview round for UI Prototypers. Good luck!

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