Going to Amsterdam

When I was just 20 years old, I went on a student exchange program to Amsterdam to study sculpture at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie. Those six month...

Seducing Web 2.0

Last week I delivered a brand new presentation at the O'Reilly Web 2.0 Expo, right here in New York City, entitled The Seduction of the Innocent: M...

Web 2.0 Merchandising: Don’t Design the Box.

What happens when Microsoft's marketers design the iPod's box. How, if given a chance, might this thinking have shaped the product itself? There's...

I’m Delighted to Tweet You!

There are about a dozen people I follow on Twitter whom I've never actually met (or whom I've met only briefly) but who after months of exchanging ...

Exploring the Alternate Twitterverse

Using some clever detective work (about which I will say little except that Google was really all I needed), I think I've uncovered the master plan...

Mad Men’s “Alternate Twitterverse”

I just found out that @benjamin_spock is following me on Twitter. I'm getting the feeling that I'm being sucked in to an Alternate Twitterverse gen...

The Wisdom of Don Draper, Part 2: It’s Toasted!

As promised, I'm going to begin featuring some of my favorite Mad Men scenes in which Don Draper practices exquisite creative communication. Today'...

Obama Futurama

Barack Obama's speech was tremendous. He was strong, forceful, and honest while fighting tooth and nail for most of the fundamentally liberal ideal...

The Wisdom of Don Draper

Upon a friend's recommendation, a couple of weeks ago I started following don_draper on Twitter. More precisely, I'm following whoever is Twitterin...

UX of a Salesman

Running shoes must be usable, but it's their seductive design that really sells the product. I'll be delivering a new presentation concept about "...

Facebook, BusinessWeek, and Me

Facebook is allowing users to subscribe to view periodic updates of various redesigned site elements that are under development. I was interviewed...

OMMA Nom Nom Nom

I am going to be speaking today, June 17th, at the OMMA Publish conference here in New York City, on a panel entitled "Optimizing for Performance: ...

Masolit

My wife is tinydiva. She is a musician. Her band is called Masolit. They are awesome. Seriously. And you should see them play their world debut per...

Spring Ahead

Two months ago, I tweeted the following cry for help: Over the last several months I have made some tough choices about what to devote my time to....

My Third Race

I am currently training for my first triathlon, the New York Triathlon on July 20. (Holy crap, that's only 9 weeks away!) Anyway, last weekend I ...

Behavior is Hiring: Information Architects, Developers, and Project Managers

Behavior is again looking for people who love making great web sites. Mostly we are seeking people for full-time positions, but for exceptional cas...

Doing Things vs. Getting Things Done

A quick thought for this fine Friday: Something about the term "Getting Things Done" always bugged me. Now I know what it is. It's the passive voic...

Edward Tufte’s iPhone

The following is in response to an interesting and thoughtful video and essay by Edward Tufte, posted on his blog/site, in which he argues, among o...

Research + Interpret + Produce = Design

A follow up thought to the user personas discussion among Steve, Jared, Joshua, me, countless other people, and in particular to Peter Merholz's th...

Design Council Counsellor

There is an institution in the United Kingdom called the Design Council. A government-funded organization, the Council's mission is "to help UK man...

R.I.P.: Owning Music (1880-2008)

Last.fm's announcement that they will be allowing their users to listen to full-length versions of millions of music tracks is one of the final nai...

The Peculiar 20th Century

Fish Magic, 1925, Paul Klee It is said that a fish, even a really smart one, cannot really grasp the meaning of the concept "wet" because it is th...

SXSW

I am in Austin Texas at my fourth SXSW. I'm here until Tuesday. So far the weather is nice and the people are as great as ever. Please keep an eye ...

Quantity vs. Quality in a Design Process

The NeXT Cube and the Apple Mac Cube. Are they iterations? Discussing his upcoming biography of Steve Jobs, author Leander Kahney describes Apple'...

The Scrolling Experience and “The Fold”

Newstand by Berenice Abbott, 1935 In print design, the expression "above the fold" dates from an era where broadsheet newspapers were folded in hal...

iPhone Apps I Want

I am thoroughly enjoying the debut crop of iPhone Apps -- a welcome improvement over the (mostly) second-rate half-baked apps available in the Jail...

Tri, Tri Again.

At 11:01am Sunday morning, in 90-degree heat, I crossed the finish line in Central Park and completed my year-long goal of finishing the New York C...

Interview: IA in the Public Sector

UX Social is Olga Howard's new initiative to investigate connections between user experience design and public policy. Recently Olga has been inter...

Flickr Usr

I've always loved Flickr, but I've never had the time to really use it as diligently as many of my friends apparently do. The Flickr Uploadr softwa...

Explicit Ancient Images

The 1/2-inch Headphone Cord (iPhone Ready!)

I bought Peggy a new pair of studio monitor headphones for her birthday last week. So now we have an extra pair of my favorite headphones, the Sony...

Challenge: If You Can’t Say Something Nice about OLPC…

The One Laptop Per Child, officially known as XO, is now appearing in people's mailboxes. The unboxing photos are up on flickr. The OLPC buzz is ho...

Circular UIs are Fun

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How Deep is your Internet News?

In today's Times, I read a story that included a fallacy that I'm pretty fed up of hearing: The accusation that web-based news and journalism is ov...

Floppies

she looks like a f$^#%ing smeagol

Scrubbing the iPhone Scrubber

I thought it was a pretty bold design decision when Apple discarded the iPod's signature feature, the scroll wheel, in the iPhone and iPod touch. B...

Design Research is a Design Process

I have a tendency to be extremely skeptical about user research in the design process. This is mostly because so much of it is, IMHO, (a) fundament...

In Defense of Graphic Design on the Web

At the Speak Up graphic design blog, Armin Vit laments the lack of "landmark" or canonical web designs. After giving several examples of iconic des...

Kindle Review in the Form of a Photo Collage

I'm not going to say much about Kindle -- as an iPhone owner, I find both the device and the service colossally dumb. But the breathless excitemen...

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