Having been a project manager in a past life, and still working day to day on projects, I watch with interest the deployment of a range of web based project management tools. In a lot of ways it’s like a dream come true. For most of us, Microsoft Project - the only real project management [...]

Is it just me?
Adobe Acrobat has given me a lot of grief in the past few months… in lots of different ways that I don’t really understand. I find myself constantly having to kill Firefox if it opens a PDF in a browser window.
In the last two days I’ve had a PDF file open in [...]

As you do, I was lying in bed the other night when the thought struck me that if I found myself in an emergency situation, if I really needed to get an ambulance to where I was as soon as possible - I had no idea what number I would need to call.
OK, so I [...]

I keep accidentally closing my tabs in Firefox, and it’s driving me mad!
Dan Saffer and Fred Sampson have been talking about Firefox’s recent experimentation with close buttons. It seems that Firefox have been playing around the close button, including moving it from the right to the left and back to the right side of the [...]

So, hurrah. BarCamp. What a great experience
Lots of smart people all together, and so friendly! The whole weekend had a great energy to it and the guys who organised it should be heartily congratulated.
One thing bothered me a little tho, and that was the ‘geekiness’ demarcation.
Apparently if you’re into UCD or [...]

Unfortunately, very average customer experiences are not hard to come across… even from brands that you really want to like… It’s a shame, because sometimes the smallest things can make all the difference. Like… if you’re giving people an automated, machine driven service, then maybe play on what’s good about it - the speed, possibly [...]

Does your gmail inbox look like this one? Mine does.
Does having a never-ending, never-empty inbox stress you out? Yeah, me too.
Did you know *you* can have a beautifully clean, empty gmail inbox with all your emails beautifully filed away, out of sight where they’re not going to make you feel anxious? No, me either.
In fact, [...]

it makes me flinch just a little when I read a page written from a usability perspective about how different countries and cultures have language and other nuances that need to be accounted for in experience design, and to find that the page is littered with US spelling. Now, I know, it was written in [...]

and, speaking of definitions…
is there another word responsible for so much confusion as ‘design’.
every time I use that word I have to spend another three sentences defining exactly what I mean by design… because there are so many different types of designing, and everyone has a different default setting.
I give you:

visual design (surface design, branding, [...]

I went to a new waxing place on Saturday, and I’m never going back there again. Ever.
Even though they’re half the price of my old salon. There is nothing that would entice me back there again.
I had my legs and eyebrows waxed. I’ve been thinking about the importance of user centred design ever since.
Let me [...]