psweber

I'm always so disappointed when a bar with a great beer list serves in these glasses.

"It was cheap, durable, steady, and stacked easily. A server needed to worry less about splashing or spilling than with a dainty flute, or about smashing that fancier glass on the way back to the bar. And for managers, using the shaker for draft meant you needed fewer kinds of glasses in your bar, saving money and precious shelf space."

Makes sense, but it's certainly not user centered.

"Against Empathetic Distress" or "Against Excessive Empathy" would have been a more accurate titles. Based on the actual title, I was hoping for something more interesting/surprising :P

TLDR; Don't just mirror the feelings of those you love, understand their feelings and use that information in a truly helpful way.

Pretty cool. Some kind of clustering solution for points that are near each other would be nice.

OR

- Hit down arrow in bottom right corner of (crappy little) compose window

- Select "Default to Full-Screen"

Do you think that extrinsic, material goals get in the way of the intrinsic goal of creation? (I do)

Jokes are still allowed. Jeeeeeeeez.

The creativity came before the reading. Coming up with a plan to allow taking 6 months off and living in another country. The 6 months of reading fuels the next set of creative ideas.

I dunno. That is pretty general. The needs of each company varies widely, and, like the author said, the master of all 4 of those categories is a rare find. Defining your company's needs will help you figure out what kind of designers to look for.

My preference for a product team structure is this: Interaction designer (product manager), art director, front-end developer, back-end developer(s)

I read your post. UX designers that "scoff at the visual design because that’s not part of their job" drive me crazy, too. In my opinion, outside of a one person design department, an interaction designer need not be able to create Dribbble worthy visual design, but they should absolutely have a strong understanding of layout, hierarchy, grids, color theory, etc.

Fixing your boss' shitty idea is an optional, difficult and mostly thankless job. Getting a boss/client that has at least minimal respect for quality design and engineering is much better for mental health.

Plenty of people prioritize work over family. It's non-trivial, but it's only a (very small) part of the answer to this question.

My hope is that I'm able (though technology and/or social change) to remain truly helpful and connected to society as I become elderly. Playing games with young kids is great, but I'd also want to be able to pass along wisdom to teens and twenty-somethings. Elderly people have started businesses, spent decades in romantic relationships, raised children, attained their goals, lost it all, achieved self discipline, found personal enlightenment, gone through major illnesses and seen how all these parts of life can or can't be balanced. Popular culture gives young westerners a very unrealistic portrayal of what life will be like. Having access to real experience seems vastly undervalued in our current culture.

Tools! They are cheap and insanely powerful. The possibilities are wide open. Seems like that is what the OP is hoping people realize.

Remove the non-essential. Figuring out what is essential can be difficult, so prototyping, testing and iterating are crucial.

"The best design is invisible" = false. "Good design is as little design as possible" = true. Pretty different concepts.

The new redesign of Amazon's Audible site was pretty good. Their cancellation process made me want to murder them, so I guess it was a mixed bag.

I like it. I know multiple people who would love to be able to pick up work like this on a light day. Everyone should be teaching their craft to some degree, too.

This might help the OP come up with a hybrid approach. Create tutorial videos, blog posts, whatever that have lessons with exercises. Publish them for free. People pay for you to take time reviewing their work and then meeting with them over Skype for feedback and personal instruction. Hmmm. I guess that doesn't scale too well either. You would have to charge $100+ an hour to make any money. Maybe you charge a small monthly amount for access to all content. I dunno. Actually speaking to the person with experience is key, but their time is so valuable that it stops being affordable enough for people that need it.

Have you found a good alternative? I'm interested in a service like this, but I haven't been able to find anything better.

You are right about all UIs changing, but the OP is talking about a new version of compose that Google is testing. It removes the full screen compose page and treats compose in a similar way to gChat conversations.

http://learn.googleapps.com/new-gmail-compose/new-compose-vi...

The new design has messaging that says the old version of the compose page will go away. I agree with the OP. Freaking terrible news. I only want to see my inbox a few times a day. Not every time I compose. I am a fan of the new visual style, though.

Anathem makes Cryptonomicon look easy. I'm literally working my way through it right now. Stephenson is one of my favorites, so it's worth it.

Using ink forces the ideas out, too. No erasing and fiddling with things.

The idea doesn't make sense for most, but it's a nice, simple set of instructions if you wanted to do it.

"All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental."

Logo rip off aside, everyone do yourself a favor and check out the Snowbird site. Beautifully designed and implemented.

For all the talk of focus after Larry Page took over, Google still seems to be releasing half baked products. I tried switching from Dropbox to Google Drive to get double the storage for the same price. Uploaded 100 gigs, got an error, and was told I had to re-download the 100 gigs to sync again. Using an early version of a Google product for a trusted system is riiiiisky.

"Oops! An error occurred. Please click here to reload the page."

I'm getting it, too.

Interesting. I was hoping this would mean that tasks would be taken out of calendar. I guess when you have millions of users, every action delights some and angers others.

Seems like the goal for addressing the first point is to get better at planning and estimating. Learn what you are capable of and then get better.

The second point is based on that Hemingway quote right? “The best way [to write] is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day…you will never be stuck.”

I've tried it a few times. I didn't notice much improvement. Maybe it makes most sense when you are working on a problem that excedes your comfort zone.

I've also been able to comfortably do contracts for companies that have worked friends (who are full time employees) to the bone. If they want a 60 hour week from me, they have to pay me 50% more.

It is a good definition. Something about influencing/shaping the experience should be included, too.