The most valuable contribution product designers can make to software is making the core value of a product clear to the people using it. Yet over and over again... this seemingly simple objective doesn’t get met. Why? Making the value of a product clear through use (esp. first time use) is how to create customers. You can tell people all you want...

As the ability for computers to interpret and generate text, images, and video keeps accelerating, it's increasingly clear that multi-modal personal assistants are in our future. But the only way to find out what form they'll take is continued exploration. With that in mind, here's some thoughts on using the AI Pin from Humane. Humane was founded...

Portfolio presentations are an opportunity for designers to showcase their design process and problem-solving skills to potential employers, peer groups, and more. Over the years, there's been a clear trend in the portfolio presentations I see: much more focus on doing "work" vs. "design work." Here's what that means and how we're trying to account...

If you get the call when both your parents and children need help with their computers, you're part of Generation IT (thanks Sam). Jokes aside, as technology gets more layers there's increasing concerns about who will maintain the hardware and software systems we all increasingly depend on. In his talk about the Life Post-Moore's Law, Mark...

Using software can be hard. All those form fields, menu items, interactive widgets and more... continually changing. So why make it harder for people by strewing all these user interface elements around a screen? This happens enough in applications that it needs a name. So let's call it Pinball UI. Pinball UI happens when the various user interface...

In his AI Speaker Series presentation at Sutter Hill Ventures, Mark Horowitz discussed the current state of hardware chip design and scaling along with significant challenges as Moore's law comes to an end. Here's my notes from his talk: We don't recognize is how pervasive our notion that computing will get cheaper in the future is. Everybody's...