Personal OKRS
I am crazy about OKRS (objectives and Key Results). I have been evangelizing this system of staying on track toward your product goals to every start-up I work with, and the results are always impressive. Even when incompletely implemented, they still create the…
Getting the V right
The Minimum Viable Product is the rule in the start-up community, and like all rules, it’s under attack by that same community. Are you shocked? This is the community that lives to destroy any status quo as soon as it’s…
My Year of Living
As I’ve written before, instead of resolutions I usually pick a subject and spend the year studying it. Last year, feeling a bit tossed about by the winds of fate, I decided the thing I didn’t understand well enough was…
Farming and Knitting
I don’t get Farmville either. Like you, I tried it out and found it painfully boring. I liked Cityville a lot. I didn’t know why, but I enjoyed coming back, collecting rent, and using it to add a library or…
A Syllabus for User Experience
When I agreed to teach a class on User experience Design at General Assembly, I had a very clear idea of what I would teach. And what I would not. I would not teach OMnigraffle or Photoshop. I was tired of classes that purported to teach…
Find Your North Star
I don’t think there is one of us today that doesn’t know of the north star, and that it will always point north. It’s in movies, cartoons, comics, and books. In a project, the north star is the goal you…
Design as Mangement
What gets measured, gets managed. –Peter Drucker Companies that identify, measure and manage key customer behaviors are the ones who succeed. While analytics and business analysis can solve the challenge of identifying and measuring, design is how you manage behavior….
A Mission for Design
I was invited to say a few off-the-cuff words at a design offsite for a Well Established Company where they were making a mission for their design team. I decided I was sick of ppt, and wrote out a few…
Don’t Kill Your Channels
A channel is a way you can reach your users. It can be email, notifications, stories in a Facebook stream or even push notifs on an iphone. Because most companies are so anxious to reach out to their user base, there is a temptation to use the channel…
Designers Don’t Ask
This is the original article that became “Design Can’t be an Afterthought” on Women 2.0. I’ve left the original title, too. I was told no one would get the reference, to Women Don’t Ask so here, now you will. Historically, designers in technology companies often…
Talking About Stuff