A Person, Artist, Software Engineer, Geologist.

I've done UI architecture and implementation for-ever, that I've picked up UX along the way.  Now I'm moving more and more in the UX side of things.  Today UX has made the big time, mostly out of necessity.  Prior to about 5 years ago, your company only needed to product an application for a specific need.  But with the advent of mobile (first) and now cloud based apps, the competition is so great to 1) stand out and 2) be better (great even), the focus on UX has become the deciding factor. This of course is great news, but the field is still all over the map.  Personal tastes varies wildly that end results still can miss the mark.  Never mind that businesses are hesitant to actually paid for UX help. As Apple has shown the world, it's all about the design.  A better design can go a long way in making life a little better.  It does not have to save the world, just a little better.

I know how I work.  How a think about, visualize a problem and go about mentally design a solution and implement it in code.  My thought pattern works pretty well for me on most occasions, but not always. There are times when I have a force myself to change my thought pattern because of the problem I'm solving requires a different mindset.  Anyway, this posting is about how I work most of the time.  Here is goes. I quickly break down a feature into operations that are required to exists and tackle that code first.  My thinking is that, if I can solve the primary issues first, then secondary features will fall into "known knowns" and I can address those at anytime (and sometimes at my leisure) and this allows me to meet my internal timeline. If I addressed features and operations that are not primary first, then I feel I risk my (and the projects) timeline without addressing issues that allow the feature to operate.  You may have seen this occur where...

Unless you have led a sheltered life and have not heard about the Volkswagen software scandal, the gist of it is, they used software in their cars to bypass emissions tests. The worse part is 1) they where warned by Bosch in 2007 not to use this feature and 2) they where warned again (by internal personal) in 2011. Software development is not a free for all against moral repercussions.  It may seam like it is, but it's not. There are ethical issues for how you code, what you code and what you ship.  Open source licenses does not mean anything goes.  Including source code that was pulled from the internet may have concerns. Then there are issues for just coding.  It's possible (I've seen it) where a person codes logic that is just wrong, and the programmer knows it's wrong.  Somethings this is done with guidance from above and others, it's just a shortcut to getting something done.  It's even possible that you have written some code, knowing that s...

A Book I picked up Austin Kleon's latest book "Show Your Work" .  It's such a great book for those that are creative, would like to be creative and those looking to expand their options.  Wrapped in a wonderful compact and easy to read format, "Show Your Work" outlines and explains the steps to be more open and how to grow. These lessons are how to grow your self and what to avoid (vampires, you know who they are).   It's cheap and well worth the read. Failure? We (aka I) try to minimize failure, but this got me thinking.  Maybe it's not failure or success that, I kind of, track in the back of my mind.  It's all learning that I want and the heck with with works or fails (at least the first 50 rounds).  I was watching a show on the "Code Camps" and a reporting learning some basic JS code.  The teacher prepped the reported that they might try an operation 50 times before understanding the correct usage of a function.  Yeah, that...

I was sitting in a meeting last week on a WebEx call where the person on the call was describing some UI functionality in an application.  Video and all.   The behavior was a surprise to me (not in a good way) so restated my understanding of the operation to make sure I understood.  A very common practice of mine, but it can make me sound dumb at times.   On my statement, others around the table gasped and stated that I was wrong and the behavior was something else.  I had heard wrong! Others around the table saw the same screens, video, heard the same words and had come to very different conclusion.  This only became apparent when I restated what I had understood.  To the shock around the room, my understanding was correct.  Their faces spoke surprise that what they thought was true was false. This was a simple version. When you apply statements made by developers to managers or QA to developers, the repercussions grow larger.  As w...

I work with Big data, I do not work with ITER .  But both appear to suffer from the same condition, they both promise great benefits in the future. Age does provide some benefits, with perspective being one of them.   For the last (well as long as it's been thought about), un-teen years, the promise of harnessing fusion reaction as an energy source has always been 20 years out.   If we just put our minds to it, we can have it done in about 20 years.  Well, we have been putting our minds to it and it's still 20+ years in the future.  By putting our minds "to it" means, a great number of countries have pledged people and resources to the ITER project that is currently being built in France (starting in 2007).  It's budget is now grown 3x times (16b) and the end is not in sight. The hope, the promise, the future is always just out there, but not yet in our grasp.   It appears that harnessing fusion is way way harder than just creating un-controlled f...

I've realized that I've lost my fear of failing.  It's not that I don't fail, it's just that I don't get all stressed out when I do fail. Maybe my tool chest contains enough tools for what I need.  Maybe I'm surrounded with others that also understand that failure is part of what we do.  Maybe I find there is so much to learn from failures.  It could also be the job market and the others that I see trying to create and implement UX/UI design heavy project. Whatever the reason (and I'm sure it's a mix), fear is just not in the mix. Without fear, progress can always be made.   It's an exciting time when there is a new project, new team, new tools and new designs all at the same time.  It's my job to pace, schedule, assign, review and plan for all of this to come together, and, in the end, be a success. Funny, no fear here either.  I've been doing this for so long that it's been easy for me to clear the chaff and focus on what...