Koan #13
The tomato was about the size of a softball — much larger and better than anything I could have found at the local grocer. It sat next to a beautifully ripe box of cherry tomatoes. They were the product of a local farm stand I had encountered on a recent trip to the country.
Back at home that afternoon, I cut into the large tomato, my mouth watering. I could taste it before I tasted it. I popped a cherry tomato into my mouth first and then ate a slice from the larger tomato. …
Koan #12
I ran across a tweet from Jared Spool where he stated he sometimes receives critiques of websites or applications from other designers. You can probably imagine someone like him receiving an in-depth critique of some site like Facebook or Amazon where the designer tears it down bit by bit. He ended his tweet by stating he feels this is unprofessional.
I agree.
I grow weary of those articles that heartlessly rip on some design decision for 1,200 words. I wonder how long it took to make the design decision they write of versus how long it took for them to…
Koan #11
Over the years I have developed a habit of labeling everything I am working on as a draft. Part of this, I think, is to protect my ego. If it’s still in a draft state and there is some grievous error, I can just say it’s a draft and I’m not done with it.
But beyond sheltering my fragile designer’s ego, there are more important reasons I keep a draft mindset.
One is that I don’t like to think of my designs as being final or finished. A design is never complete. It can always be improved.
Of course, I…
Koan #10
Look at the places where users are truly working. We don’t normally think of our products or systems in this way. I often find myself putting a lot of design effort into how a header should look or my choice of fonts or establishing some semblance of hierarchy.
While these things are important, the less exciting and downright unsexy aspects of an interface are where the user is working and far more likely to struggle — elements such as input forms (form design) or locating a specific area of the system (information architecture).
Don’t miss the obvious.
Think of it…
Koan #9
The word “perfect” is derived from the Latin word perficere, which means to finish or conclude.
As a designer, I find this an intriguing revelation. Is a design or product ever really finished? Can we say with certainty that anything is truly perfect or complete?
If you think of any great invention or innovation, you can quite easily trace its lineage — its progression. You can trace the evolution of the design, watching it evolve over decades, centuries or perhaps even millennia — right up to the present day. You will find it to be in an impermanent state —…
Koan #8
My favorite UX “war story” has to be the one a colleague related to me over a mid-summer lunch a few years ago. He was my former supervisor and had moved on to manage a different team in the organization. We would gather once a quarter to have lunch and swap sordid tales of corporate mismanagement.
On this day, he was especially animated as he related the events of a recent executive meeting. The meeting was an attempt to make sense of the lagging engagement metrics for a mobile application used by internal employees. …
Koan #7
Have you ever padded your resume or embellished your skills or just puffed yourself up during an interview? We all tend to do this and we don’t only do this in interviews. We do it with new people we meet. We do it on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
We have a biologically driven propensity to want people to like us or to see us in a better light. So, it is normal that we find ourselves putting on airs in an interview. But stop and think about this for a moment.
Isn’t our interviewer likely doing the same thing? Aren’t…
Koan #6
Have you ever been really happy to leave a product? Maybe you found an alternate or don’t need the product any longer or have issues with the brand itself. For whatever reason, it gives you extreme satisfaction to no longer use that particular product.
It’s the equivalent of dumping someone you have been dating for a long time. It can feel exuberating and liberating for the dumper, but devastating for the “dumpee.”
Not long ago, I was in a meeting with a colleague where she was giving an overview of how we were going to manage support issues moving forward…
Koan #5
“I am large, I contain multitudes.”
~ Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself” (line 51)
I enjoy cooking and fancy myself a modestly successful line cook, taking charge of most meals prepared in our house. While most of my creations are met with happy mouths and voices of praise, I have come up with more than a few bad recipes over the years. And, sometimes I just cook a dish too long or get the seasonings in the wrong proportion.
In the past, I would often find myself agitated and upset if someone did not like a particular recipe…
Koan #4
How does it make you feel when things don’t go the way you thought they should — when the cookie doesn’t crumble the way you thought it would?
Perhaps your boss just told you the company decided not to build the new feature you’ve worked the last 3 months on. Maybe a stakeholder told you a design solution is unacceptable because it won’t address a key business objective. Or usability testing might suggest you need to iterate more.
In such moments we often experience anger, become defensive or even just feel a general sense of anxiety as control over our…
