Steve Jobs on working with designer Paul Rand on the NeXT logo
I asked him if he would come up with a few options. And he said, “No. I will solve your problem for you. And you will pay me. And you don’t have to use the solution. If you want options, go talk to other people. But I’ll solve your problem for you the best way I know how. And you use it or not. That’s up to you. You’re the client. But you pay me.” And there was a clarity about the relationship that was refreshing.
Start with a Glossary
Often when starting a new project in web development participants gain a lot of proprietary knowledge about a new subject, and distribute this knowledge inefficiently.
It has been my experience that when starting a new project, it may benefit the team to start building a glossary. Many companies have their own proprietary language they use internally and this language has no usage or meaning outside of their company. Talking to others about the project, will leave them confused without a knowledge of this vernacular, and leave you scrambling to define obscure terms.
Even if you never show your client the glossary, build it for yourself and anyone else working on the project. If by chance you quit, those who pick up on the project will have a great reference tool.
SLOAN-C Awards!
I recently learned that a project with which I was associated won an award. It is the SLOAN-C Award.
Even Experts Can Be Wrong
I was revisiting some old links that I had bookmarked cam upon Edward Tuftes review of the iPhone. When I first saw this I though “yeah, right on!” But…now that I have revisited and watched the video I have to say, “Wait a minute!”
The Stickiness of Religion
I recently watched a documentary on the Amish titled “The Devil’s Playground“, and was amazed at the retention rate of Amish children after taking their Rumspringa; about 80%. This made me think. Over the main religions, which have the greatest stickiness or retention rate? Here is a little anonymous poll that I hope will help me answer this question.
Please tweet this or pass it along via email.
MSNBC Poll UI
Recently I came upon a poll on MSNBC. The UI is very unique in that a user can submit a comment with their selection. In doing so a quantitative and qualitative analysis can be given as well as commentary feedback below the qualitative poll feedback. Users can filter the feedback to only show responses for one of selected choices.
A Redesign of Digg Mobile
Digg is by far my favorite site for news aggregation. It has a very strong design compared to it’s competitor Reddit, but I’m just not a fan of its mobile site topic listing.
PROBLEM 1
The topic listing looks something like a windows mobile app. The text is way too small for iPhone users and I continuously click on the wrong category.
PROBLEM 2
Why can’t I filter by one of the three post types: news, images, or video?
I understand that we want to limit functionality in a mobile site, but these functions aren’t that complex and would provide a better user experience.
My solution…
Make the buttons bigger for iPhone users, and add in 3 checkbox button filters for the post types.
One final note.
Why isn’t Google one of the categories for Technology? We have Apple, Microsoft and Linux/Unix, but not Google. This just seems odd to me.