Design & Business Blog

I was talking to someone a while ago about prototyping and they were curious that I kept coming back to the importance of defining the questions that the prototype - or rather the user testing and evaluation of the prototype - needed to answer. … [Read more...]

Over a one-hundred metre stretch of the Belconnen Way dual carriageway there are several well-worn gravel spots that drivers have created by performing dangerous U-turns across the carriageway to head back west. The typical example of "desire … [Read more...]

Design is not easy. Sometimes the process of research, analysis and turning that into a design specification for a product or service can be relatively straightforward, but often it's not. Often we walk into a new project and we have no idea what … [Read more...]

Brand equity is something that can be calculated, as can the impact on brand by considered or foolish business decisions that is visible to or perceivable by customers and stakeholders. As a user experience designer, I'm more concerned with … [Read more...]

Novice web designers are often hit over their head repeatedly by their more experienced peers about the separation of markup from presentation and to solely use CSS to control the styling. It can be hard for some people to wrap their heads around. … [Read more...]

Having been in New Zealand for the last two years I've been a bit out of the loop with Gov 2.0 in Australia, but have spent the last two months since moving back catching up. Attending today's Gov 2.0 Lunch was one of the ways of finding out what's … [Read more...]

This is a quote from Henry Dreyfuss' 1955 book Designing for People; it's written for industrial designers but applies to design generally (except perhaps for the press operator), and note it was published nearly 60 years ago so please excuse the … [Read more...]

I'm currently reading Simpler: The Future of Government by Cass Sunstein, previous administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) in the USA. I liked this passage in the introductory pages; I've stripped out the anecdote … [Read more...]

In response to someone sharing a link to a recent blog post of mine, Difference between user requirements and specifications, Graham Hill said: In other words... Requirements should be customer jobs to [be] done and desired outcomes. Couldn't … [Read more...]

In 2010 I shared a poster with 13 questions that you should ask yourself regularly to make sure you stay productive and effective. I've now created a new version of the poster (download link below) without the hideous illustrations and some … [Read more...]