Hopefully back up and running

Giff Constablemisc

I’ve had all my sites hosted on a shared server with a bunch of friends for years, and the decision was made to call it a day on that box. My goal had been to redo this blog in Middleman or Octopress, but the time never materialized, so I’ve done a rush port of the wordpress blog to a new …

The best take on Google Reader’s demise

Giff Constabletechnology

The other week, I was saddened to learn that Google Reader is shutting down.  While it feels like much of our industry has switched to Twitter for discovery, I still like following “voices”. Amidst the various reactions to Reader’s demise, the most thoughtful response came from from Vin Vacanti: Glad google reader shutting down. They weren’t improving it and now …

Pitfalls for Designers Learning to Code

Giff Constabletechnology

Back-End Thinking Getting in the Way Over the last 3 years, I’ve worked on becoming more comfortable with modern tech stacks, starting on the front-end and moving to the back-end. Last week, I noticed a problem when I was doing some collaborative design: I was letting the data model influence my design thinking. i.e. my brain was taking the components of …

Don’t blow all your money on an MVP

Giff Constablelean, startups

I fear a general misconception out there that you can validate a startup in just a few weeks. I have been particularly pained by both non-coder startup founders and managers at big companies who think that all they need to do is pour money into a single MVP and they’ll have a binary answer as to whether something is awesome …

Book review: Lean UX

Giff Constablelean, startups, UI/UX

The Lean UX book arrived on my iPad last night, and I’ve just finished reading it cover to cover. I thought it was great. That judgement is not actually because I work with the authors Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden. I find most business books to be pretty banal, and I promise you that I would just stay silent if I …

Hire Carefully Doesn’t Have the Same Ring

Giff Constablestartups

“Why ‘Hire Slow, Fire Fast’ Is A Bunch Of BS,” or so says Danny Boice in a recent Fast Company article that was sent my way. Well, it is a catch phrase, and as such, has to be catchy and over-simplified. “Hire as quickly and carefully as you can without screwing your business objectives, and also fire as quickly as …

What is a Product Designer?

Giff Constabletechnology, UI/UX

Ross Popoff-Walker asked me on Twitter, “What do you feel is the key difference between a UX Designer and a Product Designer?”. The answer, of course, depends on whom you ask. I use a very expansive definition of the word “design”. Pretty much everything is a design decision. UX, like “product management”, is loosely defined in our industry, but to …

You fail until you succeed

Giff Constableinnovation, lean

Innovation fails until it succeeds and, if you are running a corporate innovation team, you have to let that process happen. While there is a huge desire to measure *everything* these days, I don’t think that corporate innovation programs can be judged based on short-term metrics. Their ideas and the progress of those ideas should be judged, but not the …

The humble approach to product design

Giff Constableinnovation, lean

Great quote on the creation of gmail: Buchheit later called Gmail’s development process “the humble approach to product design.” “What’s the right attitude? Humility,” he wrote on his blog. “It doesn’t matter how smart and successful and qualified you are, you simply don’t know what you’re doing. The good news is that nobody else does, either, though some are foolish …

Stop Pretending You’re Not a Tech Company

Giff Constablemanagement, technology

I keep on running into large companies who say they are not a technology company. All I want to do is shake them and say, “Don’t you get it? We’re all technology companies today.” But instead, software gets treated as “IT” and outsourced or managed as a utility. Too often, they don’t hire for creative people; they don’t differentiate creative …