Category: Most Popular

Whenever I explain my research at Google into mobile text editing, I’m usually met with blank stares or a slightly hostile “Everyone can edit text on their phones, right? What’s the problem?” Text editing on mobile isn’t ok. It’s actually much worse than you think, an invisible problem very few appreciate. I wrote this post […]

I borrowed a friend’s Tesla 3 yesterday. About 5 minutes into the ride, the windshield started fogging up. I couldn’t find the defroster on the large control screen Teslas are so famous for. In desperation, I tapped the CAR icon but that took me to the settings screen which ended up being a dead end. […]

“Perspective is worth 80 IQ points.” Alan Kay This quote is meaningful to me as I’ve often struggled with a problem until an insight from a user test “changed my perspective”. I had this intuition that video games would also change my perspective. They seemed so much edgier, playing with deeper and more experimental UX […]

My wife was recently using her tablet and I asked if she’d replied to an important email. She promptly put down the tablet and reached for her laptop. “Why not your tablet?” I quizzed. She gave me her best “Are you kidding?” face, saying in total deadpan, “I have work to do here”. My wife […]

If I’m ever asked what’s most important in UX design, I always reply “empathy”. It’s the core meta attribute, the driver that motivates everything else. Empathy encourages you to understand who uses your product, forces you ask deeper questions and motivates the many redesigns you go through to get a product right. But empathy is […]

I’ve written previously that the history of mobile has been a long, painful process of copying desktop computers and then sheepishly realizing that it just doesn’t quite work right. This is actually the way of all progress, not just in technology. Art and music follow a similar pattern of copy, extend, and finally, discovery of a new form. […]