Category Archives: General

To my boss, on boss’ day… my boss is really wonderfulhe deserves a round of applausehe keeps me out of troublethat my boss’s bosses cause

Congrats on your one year corporate anniversary… In just a year, you’ve done a lotBut what it is, I know notYou see I’ve been busy fighting firesAlthough what they were, I know not either

All teams will henceforth expose their data and functionality through service interfaces. https://www.sametab.com/blog/frameworks-for-remote-working

This past July our team was asked to present at the Product-Led Summit. Our talk was created for non-designers to understand key principles for effective UI Design. We focused on Visual Hierarchy, Alignment, Designing for Action (button design), and Form design. We enjoyed presenting the material so much that we decided to dig a littleContinue reading “Basic Design Principles for Non-Designers”

Today, though, we’re talking about a different heuristic – one of the most-used and most-useful that I know: the laws of locality. These are three ideas that explain where in your UI you should put certain controls. Why “should” you put a certain control somewhere? Well, the simple answer is: because that’s where your usersContinue reading “The 3 Laws of Locality”

What I want to talk about today is four little rules that will help eliminate these pain points in your own designs. They’re the heuristics that are a level or two deeper than “use radio buttons if the user can only select one thing”. But, if you can remember to obey the things in thisContinue reading “4 Rules for Intuitive UX”

In an Era of Constrained Resources, the Navy Adopted a Weapons System Whose Cost Prevented Both Proper Testing and Realistic Training. https://thestrategybridge.org/the-bridge/2018/2/8/fire-one-fire-ten-implications-of-the-torpedo-scandal-of-world-war-ii

A genetic mutation that slowed down the development of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in two or more children may have triggered a cascade of events leading to acquisition of recursive language and modern imagination 70,000 years ago. https://phys.org/news/2019-08-recursive-language-modern-simultaneously-years.html

Compounding works only to the extent that your lifestyle doesn’t force you to sell investments at inopportune times to fund your lifestyle. Someone earning average but uninterrupted returns may be better off than someone outperforming by 50 basis points a year yet forced to liquidate a portion during every bear market to pay off lenders.Continue reading “Inseparable Pairs”

Everyone belongs to a tribe and underestimates how influential that tribe is on their thinking. There is little correlation between climate change denial and scientific literacy. But there is a strong correlation between climate change denial and political affiliation. That’s an extreme example, but everyone has views persuaded by identity over pure analysis. https://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/ideas-that-changed-my-life/