On March 5, Tufte was appointed by Obama to a panel to advise the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, which monitors the way the $787 billion in the stimulus package is being spent. Tufte’s initial work will be on the recovery.gov website, which is the primary way the board will conduct business transparently to the [...]

Yesterday I came across this interesting web accessibility article at CNN.com, talking about how big internet companies such as Yahoo and Google are embracing it. We should all start an accessibility push in our organizations, here’s why: There are about 60 million people in the U.S. who can’t use a computer to get on the [...]

Build every feature any customer would ever want: Apparently, by having all the features anyone can ever imagine, “eliminate any possible reason that customers might buy a competitors’ product”. That’s a wrong conclusion and a really bad idea. Software that tries to be everything to everyone generally sucks. It becomes bloated, hard to use, and [...]

A Good Experience blog post by Mark Hurst has an amusing and insightful post on strategy as opposed to tactics: Why is finding direction (or strategy) so rare, so difficult? One reason is that creating the strategy is different from execution. You have to stop and take time to find the direction. You can’t run [...]

“Designing well is not easy. The manufacturer wants something that can be produced economically. The store wants something that will be attractive to its customers. The purchaser has several demands. In the store, the purchaser focuses on price and appearance, and perhaps on prestige value. At home, the same person will pay more attention to [...]

We try so hard to please our client(s) that we fail to do what would be truly pleasing. That includes also giving our client critical feedback. The challenge is to be of service without becoming servile. We shouldn’t elevate any customer to the role of superior being, but treat each with human respect. The key [...]

After reading the “Feedback. The creative killer” article I came to 4 conclusions: When ignoring an experienced and talented designer, your organization will only waste more dollars “trying out” everyone’s ideas, testing what’s been tested, ad nauseum, etc.  As far as handling feedback, I don’t think it’s the designer’s responsibility to manage feedback process. Typically, [...]

As we dealt and continue dealing with the fallout from so many executives making such terrible decisions, the simplest advice seems the most appropriate. Figure out what you care about and devote yourself to that purpose. Stay the course, even when your colleagues wander off course. And never forget that if something sounds too good [...]

As the dynamics of the Web 2.0 continue to evolve, we will see more and more consumers not only expecting, but demanding, to interact with companies and products. Corporate websites can sometimes be less than compelling… Perhaps a shift will come where corporate websites will become the forum for interaction rather than outside social networking [...]

Checkout the story of redesign of the ubiquitous prescription bottle led by Deborah Adler I really enjoyed the article’s approach to guiding the reader through the process, and the result is stunning…Just far enough out of the box to be a real improvement, but not so unfamiliar as to make it un-marketable. I don’t see [...]