Interface Design Skills for Coders (and vice-versa)

6 October, 2010
Design, Development
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Like a technical peanut butter cup - two great skill sets that go great together. What really happens when artists and coders mash things up? Intuitive Interactions: Are application developers adept at effective design? I think, as a group, no - witness all of the effort put forth to wrap "user friendly screens" in front of ERPs major and minor. Visual Basic, PowerBuilder, SQLWindows, and their ilk spawned legions of wanna-be UI designers, presented with a multitude of gadgets, and…

Design Thinking and Process – Practical Examples (2 of 2)

29 September, 2010
Design
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So, design thinking can have a positive impact on how you do what you do, and it may very well be hidden inside, waiting to get out. Ok, you are intrigued, you might even believe you can release the designer in you. Where to next? How to get started? Practical Expressions of "Good Design" Like most tech folks, you will need something a bit more concrete that just seeing something effective on the screen; some guiding principles and "rules of…

Design Thinking and Process – Is It In You? (1 of 2)

21 September, 2010
Design
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Continuing a bit on my recent Design meme; I talk about the current relevance of design thinking, and the impact it can have on change management - but if it feels a bit foreign, how can you tell if you have it in you? Do You Think Visually? Interesting how Design always seems to have a strong visual component, even though functional design (like my data warehouse or the structure of my house) is not directly visible. Still, I thought…

Design and Change Management

14 September, 2010
Change Management, Design
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Over my career, I have developed a few strongly-held design beliefs, and one came up in conversation recently, during a spirited discussion on minimal quality requirements for a[ny] data mart. I hold that the data copied from source to destination must be provably correct and complete with little effort. When agile-ly rolling staged deliverables into production, I may not have all the attributes in place for full flexibility of drill down, but if you have [say] 1248 records in the…

It’s Design, not Decorating

10 September, 2010
Design
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A few months ago, I read Dan Pink's book, A Whole New Mind. Excellent stuff, with echoes in his video What Really Motivates Us? (check it out here), and it introduced me to the idea of "right mind thinking". I've had a great respect for and interest in Architecture over the years, and have watched with great fascination (and a bit of jealousy) as my daughter progresses through her Interior Design studies at the University of Cincinnati (she's the quote…

What Really Motivates Us? Insights for your Tech Team

Over the last month or so, a large number of authors in my RSS reader called attention to Dan Pink's 'Drive' video ... httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc Props to Cool Infographics (home of the Caffeine Poster!) with the post that introduced me to the video. Key insight from Randy Krum: is this a video? A well done presentation? Or another innovative infographic? Global Nerdy (a site with style and substance - content does not match the title!) calls out that this idea has…

Calculating the Cost Savings of Effective Training Material

20 June, 2010
Business Value of IT, Skills Development and Training
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How can I go from "obvious idea" to tangible business ROI? Read on for some specific ideas on making the soft stuff worth your time. (Part of a series)

Capturing Knowledge, and Making it Transferable

If a knowledgeable trainer is not available, and the training material does not "stand on it's own" - it might as well not exist. This article covers ideas on improving the state of your art. (Part of a series)

A Hierarchy of Information Requirements

It's a common problem statement - 'I don't have enough information to (run my business unit, manage this process, identify opportunities, etc.)'. The solution designer, when faced with a question like this, starts with a little detective work; the problem is too broadly stated.

More Amazing Social Media Statistics

4 May, 2010
Social Media
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A follow-on from my last post; speaking of interesting Social Media statistics ... would you believe ... If Facebook were a country, it would be the world's 4th largest 80% of companies are using LinkedIn as their primary tool to find employees In 2009, Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshmen 80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices 25% of search results for the world's Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content Pretty amazing stuff…