Unnecessarily (dangerously?) distracting design

2023

Visualising "allowing"

2022

Deadly design

2020

Bitdefender renewal: an annual hinky customer experience

An ergonomic set-up with two keyboards

Rolling signage - a great application

Don’t show me what I can’t have

JotterPad customer experience fail

thesitewizard: an impressive body of work

2019

From annoying Clippy to something quietly useful

A mediocre to prefect scale: for websites and life

Redaction 101

2018

Deliberate imperfection: Welcome to my new website

Installing WAMP Server 64-bit

Three fundamental user needs

The context gap in UX design

From data to insights and strategy

Over-reliance on data impedes innovation

Don’t judge: “always on their phones”

Hawaii missile warning: a hypothetical UI improvement

A big psychological step forward for robocars

2017

Human- vs machine-centric content design

Empathy in electronic communications

From Facebook to direct interactions

Fakery gives permission

Tech mags: from news to guidebooks

Details details details

The humble index.html page

2016

$500 census server

Hair-trigger ads UX fail

Millennials lack social skills

Making money in software

It just works

2015

Mobile power

Credit card customer experience consistency

Selling game alphas is the ultimate lean

Idea banks and the need for curation

The potential in tools

UX lies beyond just the screen

Phone loss contingency idea

Feeling and Being in UI/UX design

Dell Venue 8 Pro opportunity missed

Wilful ignorance about the Internet

Why I keep Opera around

One simple change to increase web form usability

2014

Circular menu done Material Design right

Electronic note taking FTW

Export from Freemind to Word outline

Two must-learn Word features

16 New Rules of Business

Real feel vs quantifiable measure

Geek weekend: 68K Mac emulation

Agile, change-embracing, accelerated projects

Project management models: Agile, PRINCE2 and PMBOK

Context is king

Captcha usability over time

The cheap and the entitled

One small cable

My kanban

Vaclav Smil nuggets

The MoSCoW Method

From vision to realisation

2013

Paper-pen replacement?

Evolving PCs

Transitions and ease of use

Three elements of a UX use-context

UI, UX, IA and gamification in context

UX/UI for internal vs public users

Writing in transit

Design seesaw

Manifesting UX

UI design vs user training

Resource feature: Three Elements of UX Use Context

Replacing computers with tablets

New social opportunities in online communications

Unbox and reveal in UX design

New resource: UI, UX, IA and Gamification in Context

My ideal phone

New resource: Five Gamification Techniques

Drawing circa 1987

2012

Illiteracy in the post-PC era

Why upgrade?

A 300 milestone

Double spaces and double linebreaks

The myth of trying to change people

Making remotes simple

New resource: Comparing Agile, PRINCE2 & PMBOK

Social drives evolution from within

From box to stand

The Internet is not self-explanatory

How's this for big picture perspective?!!

Advertising facts vs emotion; then and now

My phone "desktop" minimalised!

Denying reality – the bad way

What Samsung could learn from Apple

Starting conversations

Malware an indication of openness?

Fake smiles at work

Don’t forget convenience

Yes I do design work. No I don’t use a Mac.

Making things unnecessarily complicated

When is 4G not 4G?

Computer monitors marketing full circle

Texting makes you stupid

Devices don’t matter as much now

Gender-based pricing and the illusion of choice

Error 444: Broken government

Google serendipity is alive and well

Thinking differently about profit sharing

2011

Improving the user experience of a crate

Trust of systems

Questioning brand fanaticism

Letter box dog poo bin

What is ugliness?

Human factors underpin everything we do

Regardless of the technology, human nature still rules

Making things useful

Gamification

Making that extra leap

People do scroll for content

Challenging the myth of the fold (with style)

Resolving exceptions and social media

When is marketing irresponsible?

Duck houses and old computers

Bit.ly: non-visual good design

Should we expect more from entrepreneurship?

The un-designed Facebook

Personality-tailored apps

Two approaches to entering/cracking the app market?

Don't forget the quiet opportunities

Thoughts on smartphones and tablets

Liberating lists and the Age of Knowledge Synthesis

IBM 100

The Office ribbon and location memory

What’s in it for me?

Risky assumptions about Facebook

Make your TV commercials search-inducing

Social media on mobiles

Gadgets with sealed-in batteries

2010

Probono work as innovation test-beds

Porn, (celebrity) gossip, and food

Reflections on travelling: The simple pleasure of pure human interaction

Be nice, be memorable

Digital media opportunities – Part 9: Pragmatic reality

Digital media opportunities – Part 8: e-politics and e-government

Digital media opportunities – Part 7: E-books and self-publishing

Digital media opportunities – Part 6: Knowledge-distillation

Digital media opportunities – Part 5: Mobiles as the primary data device

Digital media opportunities – Part 4: Augmented reality

Digital media opportunities – Part 3: Haptic experiences

Digital media opportunities – Part 1: Social media

Digital media opportunities – Part 2: Latent foundational technologies

Interface-building as a source of new business ideas

The Desktop Epic Revolution

Redesiging a boarding pass

Disabling the Insert key

China the Ikea of businesses

The reassurance of the tangible

I hate dislike Apple but still I talk about them

Crappy trend in TV documentaries

Social media is boring

Facebook and radical transparency

The iPad is boring

Multitouch circa 1980

The Internet: creativity, connectedness, & generosity

Still plagued by the missed schedule bug

Kill the messenger

Clarity in Design Thinking and Agile

Facebook – strike one!

Office 2007 Ribbon follow-up

Mobile use in China

Tobacco-owned food

Three universal strategic paths

Just because we can, sometimes means we should!

Crappy design that persists

The Microsoft Office 2007 ribbon

Two aspects of service design

Picasa 3 face detection rudeness

Floating bike parking

2009

20 copies of Cubicle Commando for 2010

The little things – Twitter

The little things – VISA PayWave

How to do a million good deeds

Deliberate or unwise image choice?

Industrial design collectable wants

Wordle

Death by Information Overload

Open government (the data for starters)

Keyboard heaven – cheapest is not best

The Hinterweb

Your average gamer

Think wrong and start innovating

Relationships more important than tech specs

Netbooks – more from less

Singapore cinema patrons showing symptoms of a hyper-stimulated society?

Twittering and short-term thinking

Are you a Thought Processor or an Idea Generator?

Soapie for a hyper-stimulated society

Fire hydrants – iconography

Overpackaged Singapore

Transparent Internet meets lazy designers

Idiot in charge

Building on existing stuff

What’s your favourite password?

Existential mulling 1 – Blogging

Taxi video advertising

The opportunities in being counter-intuitive

TV and Internet use are complementary

Another type of giving

Less is more – a great weight loss campaign

We are the tools we use

2008

Chinese blog posts idea

Anonymous televisions

Market Fragmentation

Construction barrier in denial

Six Illusions

The case of the entombed air conditioner

Habituation hides quality failures

Can you work this microwave?

Why does everything have to beep?

Greater economy of scale = less innovation

A sure sign of an e-society?

Censorship weirdness

Bigger hammer

Of wikis and emails

Bathroom tap support page wanted

Sales/marketing techniques in Singapore

Assumptions about business “success”

Unexpected application

Extending an existing service

Four turbulent characteristics

Blogging and transparency

That backlit logo on MacBooks

HP design full circle

Evaluating communication effectiveness

Website barriers to effective communications

Website information architecture pitfalls

A twittering experiment

Seeing the leaves as well as the forest

Seminar: Business Blogging

Bad design makes web form unusable

A nostalgic whirl

No free wifi in Sydney

Hardware is going to be interesting again

Humidifiers in Singapore

Rationality is an illusion

Jesus light switch – what happens when everything thinks inside a box

Businesses that have persistent IT emergencies

Mac vs PC - choice is irrational

MacBook Air selling in spite of missing bits – the soft stuff matters most

McDonalds website – experience over usefulness

Saying vs doing

Make sale now; lose customer long-term

How not to do a first impression (or When technology gets in the way)

Two interiors

Annoying aerosol can design gimmick

Mars

It is about people; not the technology

Design and scale

Valuing the virtual vs the physical

When aesthetics come before usability

Software registration keys – design for usability

2007

A crate is not a crate

The beauty of a simple crate

Selling blenders…

Mobile phone plans get Shonky Award

Brand transition in action

A fun and classy intro to Web 2.0

Dust collectors

An exemplary phone recording

Unintended confusion

Egg poacher - simple and useful

Renewable energy incompatible with economics

The end of ecards?

Saving energy one search at a time

Don’t made me think!

Towards greener PCs

Dog food, exploding laptops and chlorine dioxide

The age of actions without consequences

Anthropomorphisation

How to piss off customers – rant and lessons

Share your secrets and empower users

Pizza after midnight

Sophistication is…

Making meaning from sharing

Life vs lifestyle

Build your own remote surveillance drone

The Cluetrain Manifesto

Sony site - how to make it hard for customers

Why I won’t buy Apple (ever again)

Interactive ethics

Realworld™ Desk user interface

Change the world (without doing too much)

What is Astroturfing?

Spam call from GoTalk

Mega pixels

Ethical iPods?

Weird sign: a lesson on context

System builders affect culture

Most career paths are dead ends

Real voices hard to silence

Help stop global warming at work

It doesn’t have to be black or white

Sometimes, the answer lies in turning it sideways

iWoz

2006

Self-directed education, slums, and simple enablers

There is always another niche

The computer as an idea generation tool

A Technique for Producing Ideas

On Thinkpads and bento boxes

Paper catalogues online, and the lessons therein

Never argue with an idiot

Puss puss puss

When line extension is a bad idea

Big picture views

Sharing is good

Making cents with no sense

Fix the symptoms, that’ll do

Over-planning over a toothbrush

Next stop, happiness

Unexpected consequences

Lunch in New Zealand?

Smelly improvement

There is nothing new

Paying for profits

Brightness knob

The stuff of eBay

The power of little things

Core differentiation, not search engine trickery

Wasting the magic

2005

Are sales really the way to boost profits?

The eBay of loans

Writing effective emails

Three challenges of evaluating technology