Knitting is one of my favorite past-times; it is simultaneously meditative and productive. It is also decidedly low-tech and a welcome respite away from the screens that occupy so much of my work day. The Atlantic is giving The New Yorker a run for its money when it comes to beloved source of long-form journalism…
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Those New(ish) “Infinite” Selection Coke Dispensers
I stopped for lunch at a fast food place with one of those Coke machines that has dozens of drink options. Whenever I encounter them I briefly ponder how they came up with the IA. Having a category for Low/NoCal and Caffeine Free at the top level makes it harder to find beverages that are…
Read more“Smart Rooms” with Miserable Interfaces
On a business trip to London I had the dubious pleasure of staying in a hotel with a “smart” room. As is typical with a red-eye, I arrived sleep deprived and collapsed for a nap. I woke up groggy and in the dark, uncertain as to time of day with the drapes tightly drawn. I…
Read moreA Taxonomy Glitch
We’ve all been there–wracking our brains to come up with a descriptive label for a category and finding that the easiest way to describe the set is by what it ISN’T. Ideally in a carefully designed information architecture this will be relegated to iterative draft work and not make it into the live version of…
Read moreJill Lepore: What the Gospel of Innovation Gets Wrong
I’ve waxed poetic about my love affair with The New Yorker before, and this week’s issue is another one with several riveting long form pieces that I can’t wait to dig into. Jill Lepore offers a scathing critique of Clayton Christensen’s disruptive innovation theory. I have to confess that I haven’t actually read The Innovator’s…
Read more@IAS14 (which is the 15th IA Summit)
I’m at the IA Summit, hard to believe it’s the fifteenth anniversary of this event (which means that I’ve been working in this field for, well, let’s just say that if my career was a kid it could be drafted but can’t yet drink). The summit is in San Diego, which is a great city…
Read moreWeekly Roundup
I’m going to begin by saying that I continue to believe a subscription to the New Yorker is about the cheapest thing you can buy in terms of the ratio of what you get out of it vs. what you spend. Seriously. I feel so strongly about this that I almost want to personally offer…
Read moreAkron UX Meetup Calendar 2014
Somehow fall snowballed into the holiday season and it’s now the polar vortex season. The Akron UX meetup is kicking into gear–we met at Panini’s on Kent on January 14 and discussed the idea of starting an informal book club. We’re currently running a survey to select our first book, which we will discuss in…
Read moreIt makes me want to weep!
This headline from the WSJ is utterly depressing: Groups Leading Insurance Sign-Ups Haven’t Tested Program’s Web Tool Even better is the sub-head: Some Say They Expect Computer Glitches (ya think?!) (see the story here) On the plus side, this article at least acknowledges the importance of testing, which perhaps would not have even registered as…
Read moreHow reading an article on Bustle made me a bit bipolar
I started reading this New Yorker piece about Bryan Goldberg with mild interest–he’s the 30 year old multi-millionaire founder of The Bleacher Report, a sports site it probably isn’t surprising I’d had never heard of as the demographic is described as “overwhelmingly male.” His latest venture-funded “business” plan is to create a parallel media site intended…
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