Curiouser and Curiouser! on design

Pride of ownership is AWOL from software

Mon, 22 Mar 2004 20:42:03 +0000

Don Norman is my hero!.
Don Norman: Emotional Design [ETCON2004]. [Full title: Emotional Design: The Principles] Don Norman used to be known as a critic of unusable things but now, he says, he has changed. He has transformed himself into an advocate for pleasurable, enjoyable products. Beauty is good, says Norman. Successful products should a pleasure to use, and convey a positive sense of self, of accomplishment, and pride of ownership. In this keynote address, Norman shares work from his latest book, Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things. Do you believe it? Is there really more to life than whether something works well? Does you car really drive better after you have washed and polished it? Listen in. This was a keynote presentation at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference held in San Diego, California, February 12, 2004. Recording courtesy of O'Reilly & Associates and IT Conversations. A complete transcript of this and other keynote sessions is available on the IT Conversations web site. [Internet Archive]

Don Norman is one of the few people I really look up to today.

His visions picks up right where mine leaves off. We're a perfect complement to each other.

Here we are debating at PopTech 2002 together.
[Marc's Voice]

I have so many good products where I wish the authors had internalized the idea

Successful products should a pleasure to use, and convey a positive sense of self, of accomplishment, and pride of ownership.

a little better. I'm certainly going to reflect on it more myself.

What money, users, and a five year headstart won't buy you

Sun, 08 Jan 2006 22:24:21 +0000

Ari Paparo has written an insightful and, probably painful, post about how Blink.com, despite many advantages, was eclipsed by Del.icio.us.

This post wasn’t meant as a defense of Blink or my own decisions while I was there. My intent was to show that product design matters. We had more money, more users, a five year head start, and some really, really smart people working on bookmarking in 1999. The bottom line is that we simply didn’t get it right. Some simple innovations like using tags instead of folders, making public the default, building better discovery features, etc made the difference between being an also-ran and a hot acquisition target.

Worth reading if you're thinking about introducing a product. I've become very sensitive to design over the last few years. That design is important is a lesson that Paolo hammered into me. I guess I have learned to value good design but still cannot produce it. Anyone who has seen the Squib admin interface will vouch for that. But I try.

I'm also going to be involved in launching another, much more significant, project this year. I've already realised that thinking hard about design and usability are going to be key factors in whether we can be successful or not.

We don't have Ari's cash so we're going to have to make the most of our advantages!

How to tell if you need colour therapy

Sun, 19 Feb 2006 12:38:31 +0000

I like your colors is a tool by Owen Winkler that gives you a neat visual representation of the colours used in a site (at least those used via CSS, I dont think it's sampling graphics). I never realised I was so earthy...