Category: User Experience

  • Empathy and the Organic Startup

    Paul Graham, an essayist and also entrepreneurial investor, wrote an article called “Organic Startup Ideas” that indicates two different types of startups: Organic (which build something for themselves and then find others that are interested), and Inorganic (which build something they think someone else would want). His essay is excellent and essentially states: Building something small for…

  • Satiation of Desire : Be Good-Enough First

    You’re walking through the desert, the sun beating upon the back of your neck.  You are sweating, or at least you were, until the dryness in your throat seemed to dry up your skin as well.  With sand in your eyes, you see a store on the outskirts of town selling bottled water.  You pay…

  • When Customers Hate Innovation

    I’ve started to loathe renting cars. Not because they aren’t high quality nor because of the ridiculous hoops that agencies make you jump through. Rather because each car was designed to “innovate” on a bunch of things that were already good enough.  Does it really make a difference if the open trunk button is to…

  • The RapidChip Fallacy

    “The market is going to face this big, nasty problem and they will have no other choice but to use our product to solve it.” – Excited Entrepreneur Most of the time, this entrepreneur is committing the same fallacy that we faced when working on a failed project called RapidChip. This fallacy is related to, but different from…

  • Book Worth Reading: The Inmates Are Running The Asylum

    This week I got a rental car that had three buttons on the front of the dongle with the keys.  In most cases, it’s lock, unlock, and open trunk.  On this key chain, it was lock, unlock, and alarm.  Seriously, the alarm was front and center and exactly where you would normally expect another function.…

  • The Power Of Purple [The Phoenix Airport Sucks]

    If an airport was designed like most software it would look exactly like the Phoenix Suncity Airport (PHX) and, like many software companies, PHX offers consulting and tech support. Fortunately, their consultants are free and take the form of an army of purple-clad senior volunteers. In spite of this, every time I visit this airport,…