Webinar – is this thing on?

Posted on Sep 11, 2011 in Events and conferences | 0 comments

My publisher has been sending me boxes of interesting goodies recently – acoustic foam, fancy headphones (sorry ‘studio monitors’), an anglepoise stand and a very impressive microphone. All this is to prepare for a series of webinars that I’ll be hosting, currently scheduled for November 2011. I’m looking forward to them. I’ll discuss the ideas and techniques in my...

Design Critique

Posted on Apr 29, 2011 in Events and conferences | 1 comment

This week I had a call from Timothy Keirnan, presenter of the long-running Design Critique UX podcast. He’d been reading Simple and Usable and wanted to discuss the book on the upcoming edition. Here’s a pro tip: if you’re being recorded, try not to drink two cups of black coffee beforehand as it gives the voice a growly quality. You can hear for yourself by listening to the...

Weird remotes

Posted on Feb 26, 2011 in Events and conferences | 0 comments

Here are a few of the strangest remote control ideas I’ve come across over the past few months. Cushion remote? I don’t quite understand Brookstone’s thinking on the cushion remote. I guess it goes something like: ‘People are always losing remote controls behind cushions, so if we make a remote control that is also a cushion, we’ve solved that problem. High...

Come to UX London

Posted on Oct 28, 2010 in Events and conferences | 0 comments

UX London is one of the highlights of my calendar as it always draws such an amazing line up of stars and thinkers from the world of user experience and design. So I was flattered, delighted and slightly overawed to be asked to speak at UX London 2011 alongside heroes like Alan Cooper and Lou Rosenfeld and friends like Bryan Reiger and Kevin Hoffman. My contribution will be a three-hour workshop...

Beware of ‘added value’ features

Posted on Oct 21, 2010 in Events and conferences | 2 comments

Thanks to the ‘value add’ on my SanDisk USB memory stick I’ve become a hater of their products. The product managers at SanDisk decided that memory sticks were boring and that they needed to make them more interesting. So my memory stick comes with software that ‘adds value’. When you plug it in to a PC it fires up a little app that is supposed to help you organise...

How do you make simplicity more… simple?

Posted on Aug 30, 2010 in Events and conferences | 0 comments

If you’re writing a book with ‘simple’ in the title, you owe it to your audience to eliminate complexity. For the past year, that has been my problem: how to write a book about design and technology that feels simple to read? Early on, I sorted through my library looking for inspiration. Often, books about computing try to be approachable by using sub-headings, sidebars,...