Reading People’s Minds, Diane Rehm with Alan Alda

Today’s Diane Rehm interview with M*A*S*H’s Alan Alda wasn’t intended to be a user experience or content strategy talk, but it was a great segment on reading between the lines with people, using improv techniques to communicate better. He references the “curse of knowledge” inhibiting interpersonal communication and has a number of great anecdotal stories.

Listen on thedianerehmshow.org

Stop asking me to log in! Progressive authentication

I use the Fidelity app to manage a lump of rainy-day, retirement money. One of the features I love about the app is the home screen, where it summarizes today’s “movers” (best and worst performing) among the stocks and funds I’ve invested in. Now, this home screen doesn’t need to tell me how many shares of each I own or how much money I’ve made or lost, but it quickly tells me if I need to be paying attention. It gives me personalized, public information.

—or at least it would, if it didn’t require me to log in to see it. Continue reading →

Mobile Only: Rise of the computer-free web designer

Around twenty-five years ago, I was resting my right hand onto my first computer mouse. A cognitive bridge formed between an external input device and an Apple IIe monitor, positioned on an upright plane. I utilized that unnatural mental model to create digital pictures in MacPaint, followed by Kid Pix. Little did I know, that intimacy with the mouse and its keyboard sibling would be foundational to my career as a website designer all these years into the future.

With that, I’m humbled and amazed that within the last five years, my lifetime of personal computer training has been upended by today’s handheld, touch devices—and that within the next five, our industry of “desktop” designers and developers will be eclipsed by tweens designing and deploying websites from their wrists. They’ll publish as such, because they’ll have not formed the same cognitive bridge as we contemporary adults did.

By 2020, many of our interactive design competitors will have never owned, touched, nor seen a personal computing device as we know them today.

The age of the designer in a task chair will have effectively rolled out the door, into obsolescence. Ludicrous? Science fiction, even? Let’s review the trend… Continue reading →