Halftank Fuel - Product Inspiration

We’ve all been there: being stuck in a boring presentation with seemingly endless slides. I have long had a goal to never do a boring presentation. It has served me well over many years as I have been continuously finessing my presentation skills after each audience. I have successfully used Guy Kawasaki’s 10-20-30 rule for presentations: No more than 10 slides No more than 20 minutes to present Nothing smaller than 30 point type As most of the presentations I do are as either a workshop...

I am a creature of habits, and one small habit has been helping me for years. For years, I have done one digital drawing in Adobe Illustrator every day. I started my practice soon after I started teaching Adobe software at a local university. I started doing this to not only get better, but also to contribute to a regular practice to lead to mastery of something. But surprise: the closer you get to 10,000 hours of doing something, the more you realize that there is so much more to learn! Over...

Just about every product professional I have personally worked with had some kind of creative interest outside of work. I know many musicians, painters, actors, and dancers in the product space. It makes sense that if you spend your day solving problems, that you would spend your free time solving creative problems. Right now, for me it has taken the form of a messy office that I am trying to organize. I draw illustrations in my spare time, and over time this has meant piles of art supplies...

I recently listened to a great talk from Talia Cotton, a designer and a coder who recently started her own company, Cotton design. I’ve been actively hunting inspirational sources as a balm for current events. As a designer who also specializes in different disciplines, I can relate to a lot of what Ms. Cotton talks about. She is a designer but also codes, and her firm leans into very interesting coding aspects of design. What really stood out to me is what she said about AI. She said that AI...

If you have worked on any redesign project in any capacity, you have probably seen some kind of audit done on the current state of a system. Usually, these audits focus on components as a tool to promote design consistency. I wrote recently about the benefits of rethinking the auditing process to focus on auditing for objects in place of components. By promoting consistent visuals for a system’s objects, that system becomes much more intuitive and easier for users to learn. It becomes easier...

It’s not your imagination; digital products are getting worse. Every day, a big social media or digital service announces either price increases or a feature that will make users’ experiences notably worse (cough, AI). For a while, it has been a race to the bottom to see how many awful features users will put up with before they shut down their accounts for good. As a designer, this environment is not why I got into UX design. Our mission is to make experiences better, not more bloated and...

I’ve been a consultant for years, and working for many clients in different industries can be challenging. As a certified Object-Oriented UX Strategist, I have a great tool in my toolkit that helps me understand any new client, in any industry, very quickly. The first thing I do when I get a new client is do a quick-and-dirty Nested Object Matrix (NOM) based on what the new client has made public through their website and social channels. Step 1: Noun Foraging I first go to the client’s...