Informational Geometry

When I run for president, will people dredge up this blog? Will people even know to connect this, with me, and what will happen when that happens? Answer, probably a lot of crap I never expected to happen will happen. I used to think comments were the best thing to happen to the internet. Right around 2007, when Facebook opened up to the rest of the world I marveled at their interface. The interaction design was perfection. My photo sitting right there next to a little box practically making me reply to every little thing posted to Facebook. Compelling and sticky, the perfect User Experience really connecting people, with words. This type of interface had already been around, in the form of self publishing and "user generated content". I loved the disruption a decade ago, especially when in 2009 Gourmet magazine ceased and the editor, Christopher Kimball penned his gripes in the New York Times . "The shuttering of Gourmet reminds us that in a click-or-die advertisin...

I was only a little surprised to read yesterday during my commute about fake news. About a month ago I saw an advertisement online titled " Bigger Than Snowden " someone actually paid money towards an online ad campaign to purport that electromagnetic weapons are being used by the government to covertly target, monitor, and torture victims. Seriously. The link above goes to  google search results and you can see how this nonsense has been smeared around the internet as if it's true. Which it's not. Did fake news catapult It (I'm not saying It's name) into the White House? NYTimes seems to think so . And you know what, I think so too. As a User Experience designer I know how to pull the same exact tricks that creators of fake news pulled. Any of us web professionals could easily fool a lot of people with fake stories. Then I was a little surprised to read today about a group of college students who already solved the fake news problem in a hackathon. It t...

Happy New Years! One of my resolutions this year is to be more creative. And since it is now officially the New Year I thought, why not get off to a good start and write a post on the blog? I know, right? It's been too long. Last year, 2015, my resolution was to save money. Nothing like buying a fixer upper to put that resolution at the top of your list every year! It came time for a phone upgrade but as I was in frugal-mode (still am, frankly) I waited, patiently for Black Friday to get me a deal.  I used to have an iPhone 5c. A sleek little number with a candy like green plastic shell. It served me well on commutes to and from DC. I would see other 5cs on the commute and smile at complete strangers. Like, "yeah, I see you and your cool affordable iPhone. You know it. I know it. We're in the club." Mostly these people just ignored me. At last, Black Friday came, but the internet said there were no deals! How could that be? Maybe I had too much turkey? Saturday I ...

So in reading about the drought in California I was inspired to try to design some kind of solution. I guess I was frustrated after reading the plethora of news about the drought and seeing little to no solutions mentioned. Just NYTimes naggery and finger pointing and stuff about how California's agricultural industry simply does not manage water well. How California has never implemented drought measures that other parts of world has. And then, maybe it's because I'm a gardener and I recycle water that I actually see this drought problem easily solvable. So here's my little Temple Grandin moment! An "array" of solar stills floating like enormous doughnuts on the sea. It would make me really happy if some people in California would try this out. 

Confliction - A sickness of conflict between one political idea and another. The Measles Outbreak of 2015 We can't tell parents what to do with their own kids But we want to tell parents what to do But the Government has NO RIGHT to tell parents what to do But we really really really just want to tell parents what to do But we can't. It's not cool OK but seriously, some other kids are at risk, and we should just make laws NO, we can't tell parents what to do with their own kids. THAT is already law! How about we trot out doctors and be really nice about telling parents what to do? Yeah, but a lot of people understandably don't trust pharmaceutical corporations OK let's use statistics, numbers! Let the data convince the parents! BUT, the LAW says, we can not tell parents what to do with their own kids

I keep reading about new technologies coming out and hearing about the wearbales innovation. Seems like Silicon Valley is trying very hard to break into some new markets, and they're pushing into some unfamiliar territory to get there. Yesterday I was reading about apps that will tell if the person you're speaking to on your smartphone, is lying. Yup. I suppose there's some benefits to technology like that but here's why it's being developed.... to sell you more stuff . It's more Big Brother  advertising crap. What about just improving the good old stuff we know everybody loves and will buy? Where is my ultra high definition sound? Better than a CD, over the internet? This seems like a multi-billion dollar challenge, that is technically and commercially obtainable. The data storage is there, the marketplaces are there, god knows the cloud is there, and the consumers are there - what's missing is the high definition sound! All that takes is some more techno...

In my last post,  Don't Fear The User Part 1 - Empowering Software Development With Usability Techniques , we talked about what usability is. The practice of making software easy to use. And that you accomplish this by listening to your target end user. Incidentally there is a great post on Good Experience today where Mark Hurst mentions his tweet: Before you get customers involved, first you should probably check if the boss can handle bad news. This is important because before you try to do usability work your boss needs to be on board. If you're boss is fearful and can't handle bad news then it might be a futile effort. Instead usability should be empowering. It will resolve problems and can help an organization meet its goals.  Now I'm going to elaborate on how to do it. Step 1: Who is The End User? User Experience Designers when we go to work, we do this thing called "User Centered Design". And all this means is we try to focus on The End User w...