Will Evans, who does UX design at The Ladders with agile-UX champion Jeff Gothelf, recently wrote a tweet that caught my eye: The hi-fidelity vs. lo-fidelity wireframe debate is silly. You use the weapons you need based on the war you face. (link) A wireframe is meant to communicate and test. You want to do the least amount of work …
The Enterprise and Lean Startup: outsourcing app development
(aside: I’ve made a promise to myself to try to blog more often. It was tough to find the time over the winter, but I’m going to start with something I meant to write months ago) Big corporations aspire to innovate with web and mobile products, but their end results are too often bloated or uninspiring. The list of common …
Designers, entrepreneurs and doing business on the Web
I regularly talk to small and medium-sized designers and business owners in the sectors where Aprizi plays. It is always interesting to hear about their challenges and tactics for success. They are entrepreneurs just like we are in the world of tech. Some of these interviews get converted into posts for The Tail, Aprizi’s blog. I wanted to highlight one …
Design is always context-specific
I’ve had an interesting couple of days here at Altimeter’s “Rise of Social Commerce” conference. It was great being in the startup showcase with some cool companies like Swipely, Quorus, Open Sky, and 8 others. There have also been lots of case studies from bigger companies trying to make sense of “social commerce”. The diversity of what I have been …
Virtual goods aren’t so weird after all
I have been studying the “entertainment” of shopping for five years now. At Electric Sheep, we focused on the virtual side, studying places like Second Life, Stardoll, and Polyvore, and advising large brands and ad agencies on the topic. We embedded ourselves within the vibrant Second Life design and fashion community. We designed and built many virtual entertainment experiences. For …
Post-mortem on a UI “input” screen
Today I am working on some UI/UX changes to our product, and thought I would quickly talk through a UI example (soon to die under my axe) from our beta. Some context: in the spirit of getting a beta up as quickly as possible, our first user experience (FUE) was pretty crude. After registration (also soon to disappear), the first …