I’ve often marveled at the naivete of designers that are so excited about their cool new web interface, or developers who are so proud of their shiny new service or method when, in reality, their creations are only novelties because they don’t solve a real need.  Cool for cool’s sake is not good design (or [...]

A couple of weeks ago I arrived at the Gaylord Palms Resort and Convention Center in Orlando for a conference. I, along with the others in my group, was immediately impressed with the grandeur of the resort.
From the grand entrance and the ornate lobby to huge atrium with a mini everglades including live alligators, [...]

I was in Minneapolis recently for some meetings at a customer’s offices in a suburban area. While there I stayed at the Hyatt Place. It was my first trip to the area, but those I was traveling with had been there before and said that they wanted to stay at the Hyatt [...]

Good design requires understanding. And true understanding (of customer/user and business needs, constraints, opportunities, etc.) doesn’t just happen. It requires probing, studying, and questioning.
So, when one stops asking questions, for whatever reason, good design becomes much more difficult. Through the years I have repeatedly seen one key reason that people stop asking [...]

Last month I was at MIT for the Campus Preview Weekend for next year’s freshmen. It was a fun weekend packed with seminars, tours, classes, presentations and parties. Of course the focus was on my daughter, not me. But, there still were plenty of things for the parents to do. At [...]

While testing the beta of the new Interaction Design Association web site (ixda.org) I came across an entry that I had posted in a thread about the commercialization of art/design back in December 2005. A slightly modified version follows.
Design is not a random, spontaneous act. It has purpose — a goal that is trying [...]

A few years back I worked on a project to build a web-based application to replace a very unwieldy Oracle Forms application that tracked the purchase and sale of all properties owned by a large international organization.
While the developers were digging into the guts of the old system I started talking to the users and [...]

Wow! Apple’s announcement of the iPhone sure has generated a lot of buzz. In just a few days I’ve probably seen well over 100 articles, blogs, or posts about the iPhone. What is it about the iPhone that is garnering so much attention? There really isn’t anything new here. I’ve seen [...]

I’m old enough to remember the first laser printers (and the Apple ImageWriter). Before laser printers typists and computer users didn’t have to worry about what font to use. They generally only had one option (usually Courier). With the advent of laser printers they were free to choose from a number of fonts, and [...]

Yesterday I came across an online video of a talk Bill Buxton gave last year for the Alberta Ingenuity Fund/ Alberta Ingenuity Centre, entitled What if Leopold Didn’t Have a Piano? Wow! I’ve listened to it several times now, and I’m still gleaning pithy insights. (I’ll follow up with more insights from [...]