February 1998. 23 years old in my first “real” job: full-time, permanent, with benefits and my own cubicle. You know that administrative assistant who gets a little over-creative with Word or Publisher? Yup, that was me. My cube neighbor, a marketing guy just six months older, “did the website” for the office. I was terribly … Continue reading “The first a-ha”

I got suspicious when Lauren’s chat bubbles turned green. She used an iPhone, so when we kept in touch over text, it was via iMessage, which uses blue chat bubbles. When one of those bubbles turns green, that means it was sent over SMS, old school. There are a number of reasons this could happen, … Continue reading “Passing Away In Pixels”

I’m known as a bit of a stickler for having solid theory behind my designs. One of those theories, or heuristics, is learnability. A system must be learnable; a user must be able to figure it out and remember how to use it over and over again. Learnability is one of those heuristics that seems … Continue reading “Learnability and common sense”