A SUCCESSFUL YOU

When my wife and I were first married, I remember her showing me how she kept track of her budget. It was on a large, printed spreadsheet. No, it wasn’t digital, it was plotted out on graph paper. It confused me. Certainly, she could be more efficient with technology, I thought. Over the years, I kept pushing my agenda that there were phones, apps, and desktop software that could make her life infinitely better if she would simply embrace them.

Sure, she tried them, but they never worked for her.

We’re 15 years into our marriage and she still would rather have a printed, tangible day planner in her hands than use the Calendar app on her iPhone. She’d rather write in her journal with a pen than use a journaling app. And, she’d much rather go over our finances on paper than get caught up in the nuances of budgeting software. …

If you could place your current creativity level on a scale from “in the dumps” to “exhilarating”, where would you put it? How excited are you about your craft? Often when we’re trying to break out of a creative slump, we’re either battling the fear of what others will think or we’re truly searching for inspiration to get us going.

If it’s the latter for you, you might try looking into your past at the experiences that got you excited about design in the first place.

It was 1997 and I signed up for my first graphic design class in high school. It was in that class where I remember feeling the exhilaration and insatiable drive to be creative that would go on to fuel my future design career. And it all happened when I took a plain white t-shirt, created a design, and printed it on the shirt. …

If you’ve been tasked to design, test, or improve the search feature for your company’s shopping app, this short guide will give you a list of common patterns, UI elements, and considerations you should make. On the surface, the search feature seems so universal it almost goes unnoticed. But, dissect it through competitive analysis, and you’ll soon see how powerful and unique this powerhouse feature can be.

Not every shopping app is going to need every search feature — that’s for the team of design, development, product management, and stakeholders to hash out and decide on. …

Janine is my friend.

She’s an exceptionally talented product designer and a powerhouse of grit and tenacity. 2020, the year of COVID, proved to be the most challenging year in her professional life. She was fortunate enough to keep her job, didn’t lose anyone close to her to the pandemic, and is in relatively good health despite the stress and difficulties in her personal life. Nonetheless, it was a year that obliterated her motivation and creativity.

“Why, Mike?”, she asked me.

“Why do I have zero drive and zero energy to be creative when that’s all I felt like I was doing?” …

UX RESEARCH

I find that even though I’m quite familiar with and comfortable conducting research during the UX process, I still draw a blank somedays. This is a list (and definitely not a complete one) of questions I’ve asked participants in the past. These go a little beyond the “yes” or “no” questions, although there’s a time and place for those too when gathering data.

I’ve created this list first to serve as a reference to all of you, and second for when my mind goes blank and I need a refresher! 🤣

Closed-ended questions

Closed-ended questions can be a good, objective place to start when gathering information from a participant. Because these types of questions are typically easier and quicker to answer, it can help commit the participant to the survey. But, they can be sprinkled throughout the research as well. If none of your options in a closed-ended question reflect a participant’s opinion, make sure you account for that. …

CAREER ADVICE

This is Part 1 in a two-part series that explores the skills you can apply on yourself now to set you up for a successful future in your career.

Our ability to adapt is phenomenal.

We are working in a world vastly different from the one we were familiar with just a year ago. We’re adapting to virtual meetings, working from home, juggling school with our kids, and social distancing ourselves — some to the point of social deprivation. Despite these challenging times, most of us have been really good at learning the hard skills needed to perform in our jobs. It is these hard skills that qualify us to do our jobs. …

MANAGEMENT 101

In a world of self-help listicles and how-to life manuals, very few touch on how we can effectively & systematically cripple our direct reports at an emotional level. If you’re a manager who’d like to sap creativity from your employees and dismantle their self-esteem, welcome aboard.

while there is satire in this story, it is not my intention to encourage the practice of domoralizing employees and destorying their self-esteem. This story does, however, contain real-life experiences as told to me by my colleagues. …

December 7, 1941 — what an extraordinary day in history. My dad was seven when the U.S. Pacific military fleet was decimated by a surprise Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor. On that Sunday morning, thousands of lives were lost. Not long after these events, the United States formally entered World War II.

Before his passing in 2017, I recall many occasions when my dad would share the events and feelings that came over him when he learned of the tragedy at Pearl Harbor. My dad, even at that young age, was an expert at looking up into the sky and being able to identify the U.S. fighter planes soaring overhead. He knew their sounds, where they were heading, and at the tender age of seven, was fully engulfed in this World War from his little town. My dad later went on to serve in the U.S. …