When one button isn’t enough
Posted on July 14th, 2011
I’ve been thinking about mapping this out for a while, but couldn’t have done as good a job as this.
Categories: User Experience
I’ve been thinking about mapping this out for a while, but couldn’t have done as good a job as this.
There are too many UX roles in London right now to have enough qualified people to fill them all. I’m not the first to say it, but if you’re wondering if the grass is greener elsewhere, then now is the time to get out there.
South by South West is not a conference, nor a festival. It is a vast, exhausting attention vortex that wields global influence and remains unlike any other event I have experienced. Unlike most other authors of posts like this, I have not been before. In fact, if you’re reading this, there’s a high chance you’re like me. Every year, I would watch as peers from all corners of the globe would descend on Austin, shriek-tweeting their delight of endless partying and seeing big-name panelists duking it out over buzzwords we see in our RSS clients on any normal day of the week, but live. And at the same time you sit there at your desk, wondering how on earth they managed to squeeze it…
There has been only one. Only one single service that has done this properly, and having tried out PR-laden SXSW hype-beasties #Hashable and Ditto this week (as well as countless others, Quora included), I’ve experienced it once too many, turned incandescent with rage and this post is the result. Stop trying to own my social graph. Stop trying to make me add friends in your app.
Tagged: facebook, friending, sign in, social graph, twitter
A bit belated this, but here it is nevertheless: It loses a bit of impact without the commentary, but you can get the main idea I think. I’d like to thank those that came along to listen and joined in with their own stories. UXCampLondon was my first BarCamp experience, and it was brilliant. Thanks to everyone that put it together, there’s some absolutely fascinating work happening at the moment.
Tagged: barcamp, conference, event, presentation, slideshare, userexperience, ux, uxcamplondon
While I’m still in a post Berlin haze, lo and behold, Mark Hurst and the folks at Good Experience have come up with a great video by Chip Conley. Chip’s the CEO of a boutique hotel chain in the US, which is the real world version of what we were fictionally designing for at UX Intensive a few weeks ago. Some lovely insights into hospitality experience and empowering employees in a great talk from last year’s GEL conference in New York.
Tagged: california, conference, gel, good experience, hotel, talk, userexperience, video
Last week Two weeks ago I was lucky enough to be sent off to a very big hotel in the middle of Berlin for Adaptive Path’s UX Intensive training course / conference thing. It was really rather special. Special enough to warrant a proper blog post, so off we go: The Adaptive Path Experience This is the first time I’ve been to an AP event. They’re renowned for being a tad expensive, and for us Brits, often exotically located (San Francisco! Copenhagen! Other places that aren’t London!). I now understand why. The consistent theme throughout was quality. From the small touches (branded sharpies and Moleskine cahiers) to theming the week around hotel experience and its associated design challenges (pretty savvy when most delegates are…
Tagged: adaptivepath, berlin, conference, design, germany, ixd, research, strategy, training, userexperience, ux, Web, webdesign
“The big theme, instead of riffing on the future of design, was much more a retrospective of what’s gone before. And I don’t think it was even intentional. Lots of snickering over Photoshop 2. Seeing the guy who designed the original MTV2 brand play all the shorts (very cool, I was a big fan). But I can’t connect the dots between digital stuff that was done in 2001 and the future of web design nearly halfway through 2009.”
Tagged: carsonified, conference, design, fowd, ixd, microsoft, typography, ux, watchmen
Those responsible for the larks of the Twestival Twitter meetup are at it once more. The first batch of tickets for Twestival London were released this afternoon. There are more coming later this week apparently. There was one major usability problem – so I grabbed the Flip to film Kai booking his ticket. But hey, 350 twitterers have managed it thus far so maybe I’m just being picky. Here’s the result. Kai says sorry for swearing: Buying a Twestival ticket – usability fail from Simon Doggett on Vimeo. See you at the party folks
I’ve just done a big post over on the worky blog about using Facebook to fundraise. Would love to know your thoughts on it fundraisey-types x
Tagged: facebook, fundraising, User Experience
I just had my first anniversary. Last November, I switched from PC to Mac. Violent MSFT dissent. XP no more. So long, spyware. Etcetera. Best. Day. Ever. After a few months of consistent and dedicated whinging, I’d managed to persuade my tech lead that I needed a MacBook Pro to edit video on (and you can see the eventual results). We had plans to make videos to help explain concepts that had thus far been explained by unfriendly, bank statement-esque tables. This is how it turned out: Justgiving Fees – Explained in Video! from Justgiving on Vimeo. A month previously we’d been at FOWA ’07, and I remember a different tech lead remarking at just how many Mac laptops were on such wanton display.…
Tagged: apple, FOWA, mac, macbook pro, microsoft, office, OSX, User Experience, xbox
Tagged: alerts, google, pictures, screenshot, spam
I don’t really want to talk about fundraising on this blog. However, I can make an exception this time. ‘Atheist Bus’ has dominated my working day since launch on tuesday morning. We’re in the enviable hotseat where we can see where all the traffic is coming from, with our all our awesome dashboards of win. Here’s a couple of interesting tidbits I thought were worth sharing: BBC News is still the biggest referrer. Although they’ve now taken down the original link, since according to their jolly editorial team, it’s an advert. Yeah. OK. Google is next. Big G. No surprise there. Facebook is third. Also, not surprising. Facebook generates a huge percentage of mainstream social media, despite the cool kids trying to hate on…
Tagged: atheist, bus, clients, dashboard, fundraising, gig, kingston, office, quarry, User Experience
As I write this, my sysadmin and his line manager at work have both made a pilgrimage to the Apple Store. So it’s been about three days, and I’m man enough to admit that I really, really want one of the new MacBook Pro’s. Glossy screen or not. My current machine is 11 months old now. It’s kind of upsetting just how much the basic spec has moved on in that time. Why can’t I trade in my not-that-old-MBP for a new shiny one, and just pay a few hundred quid to deal with the depreciation and upgrade kerfuffle? I can understand the economics behind Apple wanting everyone to just buy a new machine (at least once a year, looking at the release intervals),…
Tagged: apple, macbook pro, MBP, User Experience
Me and most of the London tech collective attended the Future of Web Apps conference in a cold and desolate part of docklands this week. I’m going to post a series of thoughts on it over the next week or so. On the way from crappy hotel to Excel on Friday morning, I shared a bacon sandwich with a guy from Microsoft. They had a booth in the corner of the expo floor with some 360s, a Microsoft Surface table (underwhelming, over-expensive) and some marketing guff about Expression Web, Visual Studio and other bits and bobs. Not a peep about asp.net anywhere to be seen. He told me that Microsoft came to these events now because they want to be more associated with the…