feverishaaron

This article seemed to point out a problem with perception of "the value of a letter grade" rather than a lack of motivation to do hard work.

It indicated to me that grades, rather than the outcome from learning, are dangerously overvalued in our education and employment systems.

Looking at their usage "graph" (if the relative visuals indicate actual percentages), it appears that IE overall is a very small percentage of their views - perhaps 3-5%. Within that small percentage, IE 8 makes up what appears to be around 20% of all IE users. So they are spending time to optimize for around 1% and maybe 2% of their total views.

I'd suggest that it probably isn't worth it to spend a significant amount of time to support an audience that small. To determine if this is true, the company should track conversions from those using the IE browsers. If they have an average or higher than average number of conversions, one could argue that it is worth the time spent.

Otherwise, you are probably wasting significant engineering and design resources to solve problems for laggards who probably won't give you any money.

There's some undertone about having Drummond listed as the co-author.

When the chief legal officer co-authors a post with a ceo, it means that each word has been carefully chosen, because each of these statements carries serious consequences if they get it wrong.

I was wondering if this is a reaction to the whole 6 strikes thing, and the desire to avoid detection with a seedbox or VPN. Of course, which you would want to pay for anonymously.

Did you consult an attorney before doing this? I'm curious what the ramifications are. Back in my boutique days, we were stiffed several times, but I never wanted to pull a stunt like this for fear of legal retribution.

Instead, I hired some very good collectors, and had a stipulation in my contract that the customer was required to pay collection fees for invoices over 60 days late.

This resulted in my company getting paid in full all but twice.

>> but still seem to be a summation of current design trends rather than any sort of innovative new way to display the information

>> I also agree that it looks a lot nicer because of the high-end stock photos.

Exactly. This looks like a first-year design school project for these, and so many other reasons.

This design would fall apart without visually simple photography that tailor fits to the grid. The right way to approach a redesign would be to collect an aggregate of typical facebook photos, and use them as examples.

There are many different types of .223 caliber rifles, many of which are bolt-action and don't fall into the "oooh scary looking para-military-like assault rifle category".

Indeed, they were intended to be separate examples.

Skeuomorphism has been interpreted two ways - as decorative elements (leather stitching), and in functionality that attempts to emulate a real world object (page flipping in an e-book).

The former is just a matter of aesthetic preference. Where skeuomorphism gets dangerous is in the latter case.

A perfect example is the horrible address book in OS X. It looks like a book, and therefore the user expects it to function like a book. Yet, it doesn't. It's this area of interaction design that has run afoul at Apple.

Interesting that Jony will be overseeing UI. I expect a more minimalistic polish to upcoming interfaces. In other words, this is the beginning of the end for the skeuomorphism trend at Apple.

The lack of clear affordances in the Microsoft design really bothers me.

* When two buttons are next to each other, do they behave as tabs, toggles or buttons with disparate behaviors? You can't tell.

* is an icon next to a field actionable? I have no idea until I try to click it.

* These buttons are very reliant on :hover to indicate behavior. That's not very useful for users on touch devices (Is the button intentionally disabled, or is it broken?)

This post exhibits everything that is wrong with standards bodies.

Constantly fumbling with; forgetting or losing the PDA stylus – happened to the PDA stylus.

Why would you use something like this, and not just a SD card?

I found it interesting that the hosts of that show were suggesting that the system would be self-correcting. I think that may have been the case before a global economy, but now if your home nation can't consume, a corporation can either relocate operations or refocus on growth markets.

The final, and most extreme self correcting option they offered – revolution, would probably come too late and have little effect on corporate and financial executives who have by then fled the country.

I feel your pain. Two days to a week is "free work", not a challenge project. I too would respectfully decline if I wasn't getting paid.

What he is calling "spec work" would be better described as a "challenge project". I think these provide a lot of insight that you wouldn't have the opportunity to receive via the standard portfolio/github and interview process. If you give a job candidate a small project (3-5 hours tops), you're able to see how they solve problems and most importantly, how they interact with your team.

I've asked "A player" candidates to perform challenges, and I have happily performed them myself to get a job. And as a candidate, there have been a couple of time where I've realized via the challenge process, that I wouldn't want to work with a particular group.

It's a smart use of time by both parties to quickly determine if the candidate is indeed a good fit for the position.

Spec work, as in completing a project to receive consulting work, is an entirely different debate.

Can you ask her to outline the process she used to learn to code this tool?

They also hired a direct mail firm (VentureDirect) as their agency of record, and they were expected to spend around 10 million with them. Yet another example of the crazy and flawed approaches to start ups and online marketing back in the day. We all thought we were so smart. If only we had known better.

As a UX guy, I'm trying to learn how to program. It's very difficult, and requires a different mental model of learning. However, I recognize the immediate value that understanding programming concepts will provide in evaluating how feasible a UI schema is. It will help balance priorities – do we first deliver a feature then refine, or do we take the extra engineering time to provide an enhanced user experience from the get go? Of course, all of these priorities also need to be weighed against your business needs, and the immediate needs of your users.

If I were a member of management, and I found out that he was doing this, I would be furious. Not because he gamed the system and received the bonuses, but because he didn't share his innovation with the rest of the team and improve everyones' efficiency. If he had done that, I would recognize his talent and initiative and promote him, allowing him to do more rewarding, higher-level work.

UX Designer, here. I think the key point in this post is to discuss the merits of any design suggestion. Designers aren't often aware of the effort it would take to implement a seemingly "tiny" enhancement. A lot of little tweaks add up to a lot of time, and designers need to be cognizant of that fact.

I always ask developers to tell me how much effort a change will take, and use those figures to temper my recommendations. If a tweak is really important, I'll push for it. If it's a "nice to have" we'll put it into the backlog, or push to the next version roadmap.

Note to interested developers... there is a HUGE market for a disruptive tool in this space. If anyone is interested in working on such a tool, I'm game.

This is a constant frustration for web designers. Photoshop allows you to create fantastic visual effects, but the layout tools are abysmal. Fireworks is well... Fireworks – Adobe's "redheaded stepchild" in the tool chain. It's buggy with a slow, horrible UI. While some of Fireworks tools solve some of the layout problems (nine slice scaling, better vectors, grouping), their lack of decent masking and the horrible color picker and WTF interface actually slows designers down to where it become a draw.

All that work to create a responsive layout, then they put an omnipresent, fixed position social bar that covers the text when viewed on a phone.

There are a lot of tankers sitting off the coasts. I wonder if they are holding oil that was delivered to speculators, awaiting sale?

Please correct me if I am wrong, but I believe responding to a guy like this might put your company in legal jeopardy in relation to the former employee.

We have been explicitly told in the past that we cannot discuss former employees' performance with interviewers who call for a reference. We can only state that they were employed with us, and what specific job functions they performed.

The multiple accounts issue is the main reason I don't use G+. It's no longer practical to tie an online identity to a correspondence account.

I'll add that during your first conversation the designer should dive right into understanding your business, and understanding your objectives, before any discussion of solutions.

If the conversation flows in the opposite direction, you have a problem.

Don't forget FlashControl for Chrome:

https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/mfidmkgnfgnkihnj...

I think these companies are looking at this from a long term perspective. This and the smartphones are the only growth markets post-PC. Almost everyone will own a smartphone and/or tablet sooner than you think, and just a small portion of that market justifies the current slaughtering they will incur to gain entrance to the market and establish a beachhead. At this point it's a battle to the death for the #2 spot.

Apple has a massive lead by both defining the market and being almost 100% vertically integrated. Where they weren't vertically integrated, they guessed right on the opportunity factor and cut deals for components while the rest of the market was asleep.

Production will eventually level out, and competitive software will get better, and other tablet will eventually be able to turn 90s era PC-like margins on their products. Depending on how smart Apple plays the game (and I am betting on very smart), this may take a few years to over a decade.