I am a designer. I study design. I have learned about grids, layout and structure. I have obsessed over typography. I have been unable to disregard an ineffective use of the negative. I have wrestled with the complexities of human psychology and sown the subtle seeds of suggestion. I have considered the components, compositions and [...]
The software-development world needs another acronym like it needs another methodology. Yet, if you’re anything like me — someone who loathes acronyms, by the way — you find that some acronyms are actually useful for remembering models or concepts (for instance, it’s easy to recall all of the elements of Bill Wake’s INVEST when creating [...]
With the introduction of iOS 4, Apple finally gave enterprise users the ability to install or update applications wirelessly. This web-based approach greatly simplifies app deployment and even allows companies to create their own private app stores. Starting with version 3.2 of XCode (Apple’s IDE for iPhone and OS X development), developers have a new [...]
Two years after passing the certified usability exam offered by Human Factors International, I attended some formal usability training in Minneapolis. The User Centered Analysis and Practical Usability Testing courses offered by HFI that I took last May were all I expected and more. The instructors, Steve Fleming and Drew Falk, and even the area [...]
Life is like a Mad Lib. When we fill in the blank spaces without understanding the context, we usually end up with nonsense. I think that most enterprise change initiatives suffer from this problem. Although the functional and technical details are often exhaustively scrutinized, the people part of the equation is a blank hole we [...]
Have any of you read Deadline, by Tom DeMarco? Believe it or not, it is a novel about software project management. I read it years ago, back in the ‘90s, and fell in love with it. The basic premise is that the world’s best project manager is kidnapped and forced to manage a project for [...]