While the first reactions to Windows 8 UI demo ranged from “whatever” to “WTF”, most of them were focused on the published technological decisions rather than UX aspects. I want to present my opinion about the UX itself. The very first word coming to my mind when I see the Metro start screen is “gaudy”. And no, it is not …
Category Archives: tech-and-biz
UX Design Process
User Experience of a software product is an extremely integral and cross-discripline thing. They are many ways to ruin it — unusable content, wrong emotional tonality of graphics, unrealistic usage scenarios, suboptimal interaction design, technical compromises, you name it… Perhaps, security is the only other quality of software, which ubiquity is on par with UX Design. Hey, hacker scene has quite …
iBad experience
As Apple has presented iPad 2 recently, it is time for me to sum up my iPad user experience. Because Apple focuses on the overall user experience, right? And the competition focuses on specs and features, and this is wrong? At least this is how Techcrunch has understood the Jobs’ message. Unfortunately, I cannot confirm …
Daily time budget
I work 8 hours per day. If I’m in a normal mood and health and averagely motivated, I spend only 2 to 6 hours per day developing software, with average of 4 hours per day. The rest time I spend on other activities. This is an absolutely deliberate decision of mine. I can only be productive so many …
On Personalization
Personalization is a concept from the world of web, meaning the ability of the web application to recognize and tell apart different users and act differently on per-user base. To enable personalization, users almost always have to invest time, and sometimes money, to sign on. In exchange, they can obtain direct services, for example, remembering …
Geekonomics
The personal nanoeconomics of a geek begins typically in his childhood, when he gets his hand on his first computer and his parents detect that he is spending more time with computer than other children do. Other children have several hobbies, the geek has only one. So that while others can typically dance, play …
Success is harmful
Little can be more harmful for a software development team than team members immediately after a successful previous project.
New Features of Silverlight 5
Two days ago, @ScottGu has announced new features scheduled for Silverlight 5 on the Silverlight Firestarter event. He has said that there were over 21000 votes about the new feature set collected from the Internet, and around 70% of them have been scheduled for SL5. Now, this is truly amazing. Just think about it. Which other …
My Android anchors
Now, when WP7-based devices are available, I was thinking about buying one. After all, I can easily develop software like a custom twitter client on WP7 without having to learn anything I don’t already know. The “only” issue with WP7 is that I have a couple of apps on my HTC Hero, which I absolutely need or …
PDC10 Controversy
In response to the Mary Jo Foley article about apparent Silverlight strategy shift (I’ve mentioned it), Bob Muglia has now clarified a couple of things. To spare you a visit of his blog, here is my short version*: a) Microsoft has failed to put Silverlight on to iOS (and, for some unknown reason, on Android). …