Category Archives: Opinion
“Play Money” and RMT is why I will never play MMORPGs again.
I just got finished reading Play Money: Or, How I Quit My Day Job and Made Millions Trading Virtual Loot by Julian Dibbell, and I must say that no book in recent memory has riled me up so much. Don’t get me wrong – I am not angry because I am naive about virtual worlds [...]
Also posted in Critique, Games, Readings Tagged Critique, Discussion, Games, Human-Centered, MMORPG, rant, Readings, RPG Leave a comment
Facebook needs human-centered design
The most recent user uproar against Facebook and its increasingly cryptic privacy settings spurred the New York Times to collect questions from concerned users and posed them to Elliot Schrage, vice president for public policy at Facebook. He responded quite eloquently in this recent article, but unsurprisingly his words have done little to calm the [...]
Also posted in Advice, Critique, Design, Human-Centered Tagged Critique, Design, Discussion, Human-Centered Leave a comment
Random stuff I found on Sticky Notes
I recently went through a bunch of notes I found on my computer. All of them look to be the beginnings of blog posts, but I thought it would might be fun to throw them all together in one blog post and expand up on them later. (And then I can delete them from my [...]
Also posted in Design, Human-Centered, Reflection Tagged Co-Design, Design, Design Thinking, Discussion, Human-Centered, Ideas, Reflections Leave a comment
How do you improve or update your knowledge on user experience design?
Someone asked that question on LinkedIn in the User Experience group. The author of the question also went on to say: “Some people read books, some write or share their experience or thoughts on blogs or by simply reading some famous author’s blogs to upgrade their knowledge. Share your most preferred blogs or books to [...]
Also posted in Advice, Design, Design Philosophy Tagged Design, Design Thinking, Discussion, Interdisciplinary Leave a comment
Communication in the process of co-design
This post will most likely feel like like a train coming off the rails. I will clean it up at some point. Maybe. Anyway… Most designs are the result of a process of co-design, involving several stakeholders and people directly involved in the creation of something. In this process, there is a constant state of [...]
Also posted in Design, Design Philosophy, Reflection Tagged Co-Design, Design Thinking, Ideas, language, process, Reflections 4 Comments
Design Thinkers, Design Keepers, and Design Baggage
I was going to write a post today about the ways in which design is being discussed, viewed, and used by individuals and organizations. My colleague, Matty Snyder, and I have spent a lot of time discussing this and alas, he beat me to it and wrote it better than I could have. Check it [...]
Also posted in Design, Design Philosophy, Reflection Tagged Design, Design Thinking, Ideas, Interdisciplinary, philosophy, Reflections Leave a comment
No Google, I don’t need advice on pregnancy.
I just got done reading an article from Google’s Official GMail Blog, entitled Serving Better Ads in Gmail. Scott Crossan, the GMail Product Manager, stated that GMail will now provide advertisements based on past emails if the current email doesn’t provide a good enough match. They are doing this in the spirit of giving you [...]
On Tools and Process
I recently participated in one of those joint school-company training sessions. I will just call the company “Acme”, and state that they provide a large assortment of design tools that we all know and love. I was quite disappointed with it. I can deal with being shamelessly advertised to, but this event was particularly bad [...]
Also posted in Design, Design Philosophy Tagged creative software, Design Thinking, process, tools, training Leave a comment
Incentives and the Path of Least Resistance
This is sort of a continuation of the previous post about designing to change behavior. I am not really arguing one side or the other here, rather I am searching for some insights about design. To that end I have chosen a few books to dive into this summer, among them the book Freakonomics. One [...]
Also posted in Design, Design Philosophy, Human-Centered Tagged Behavior, Green, Human-Centered, Incentives, Sustainability Leave a comment
People are not to blame for bad privacy decisions