January 2012
2 posts
Mutegate Solution
If you’re not caught up…
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/13/nyregion/ringing-finally-stopped-but-concertgoers-alarm-persists.html
Here’s a simple solution that requires no additional user facing options and would solve the problem (which I’ve experienced) for the majority of cases: Leave the button behavior the same as it currently is, but vibrate the phone for 5-10...
Introducing Pictuo
A year ago I set a very important goal for myself. I decided that I wanted to reach a point where I could conceive, design, and build any of my ideas independently…if only in the form of a working prototype. So I set out to teach myself to code. My front-end skills were passable at best, and while I understood the foundations of programming, I hadn’t learned a language. On January 1,...
July 2011
1 post
Moving Forward
Two years ago my friend Caleb and I made a difficult decision to leave Scrapblog and move to the Bay Area. As part of that move we made an informal pact that when either of us started a company of our own, one would go work with the other. That time has come, and that company is Yobongo.
In early July I’ll be joining Caleb and team at Yobongo as their first Product Designer.
Over the last...
October 2009
1 post
1 tag
The Page Fold is No Myth
The folks at cxpartners recently conducted a study on the tendency for visitors to scroll a web page. The article can be found here While the study is very encouraging, I can’t say I totally agree with some of the conclusions.
A quick snoop around the web will show you successful brands that are not worrying about the fold either.
I would argue that successful brands *do* care about the...
August 2009
1 post
1 tag
California or Bust!
That’s right! After 8 years in Miami, I’ll be making my way to Palo Alto, CA to join Andrew Chen (@andrew_chen) and company. I couldn’t be more excited about the opportunity and I am humbled to be welcomed into such an amazing team.
Needless to say, leaving Scrapblog was a very difficult decision for me. Scrapblog was more than just a place of employment, it was my life and my...
May 2009
1 post
Thoughts on the Lost Season 5 Finale
Here are my thoughts after reading a few discussions and adding some of my own opinions…
Jacob has been the leader of the island for a long time, and wants to bring people to the island who deserve second chances, and let them live in this utopia forever with eternal life. Forgive them of their sins, so to speak. Very biblical. He does this by physically touching them as we see with his...
March 2009
1 post
1 tag
Kysio is Born
My girlfriend (@HeatherOT) is busy getting her own business off the ground. She specializes in a form of holistic therapy geared towards helping professional athletes recover faster and perform better overall. As such, she was in need of a few basic things to enable her to begin bringing her services to market. This included a name, a logo, a website, and a solid brand strategy. With these goals...
February 2009
1 post
The Love Machine (iPhone Game)
Those of you following me on Twitter have no doubt heard me referring to a “secret project”. Well today the cat is out of the proverbial bag. I present to you…
The Love Machine
What is it?
The Love Machine is a campy little game for the iPhone and iPod Touch that reveals the type of lover you are according to how *cough* dexterous *cough* you are with your finger. It’s...
November 2008
1 post
2 tags
Scrapblog takes home two Adobe MAX Awards!
The winners have been announced and Scrapblog has taken not one, but two Adobe MAX awards in both the RIA category and the coveted People’s Choice Award! We could not be more excited about this. We’ve had our eye on this prize since the birth of Scrapblog and we can finally check that off our list. Kick ass!
October 2008
2 posts
1 tag
Virtual Goods Summit 2008 Notes
Here are my raw notes from the Virtual Goods Summit 2008. I’m presenting them to you as-is, so take it all with a grain of salt. As soon as the videos are posted, I’ll link them up. Here are the photos I took of the event.
Branded and User-Generated Virtual Goods
Margaret Wallace, Rebel Monkey Brian Balfour, Viximo Lee Clancy, IMVU Amy Jo Kim, Shufflebrain Sean Ryan, Meez
Quality and...
1 tag
Icebergs
If you’re planning a feature set for a product, always beware of “icebergs”. These are features that on the surface look harmless and trivial, but once you dive below that you discover that you’ve only accounted for 10% of the scope. Unexpected encounters with icebergs, without the proper navigation skills, can spell disaster and possibly sink your entire ship. There are...
September 2008
2 posts
2 tags
Learning Game Design: Designing a Game is Like...
I came to the realization today that designing a game is a lot like *playing* a game. It often feels like the solution already exists, and it is simply my job is to uncover it. An infant game design is like a giant disassembled puzzle of disparate parts. The parts have to put together in the perfect combination to form a cohesive entity where each part logically relates to every other part, which...
2 tags
Learning Game Design: iPhone Gameplay and...
I’ve been giving some thought to how my game designs would perform on various platforms, and how the typical usage model of a platform affects gameplay and potential engagement. For example, playing a game on a home desktop computer affords very little inherent interruption of gameplay. You’re in a comfortable and stationary position; it’s easy to block out an uninterrupted...
August 2008
2 posts
1 tag
SummerMash Miami and SocialMediaCamp
Just wanted to give a quick thanks to everyone involved in this weekend’s events. SocialMediaCamp was amazing! It was great to see all the familiar faces, and more importantly, the unfamiliar faces. I’m constantly amazed at how quickly the Miami tech community has been growing. Thanks to Brian Breslin, Alex de Carvalho and of course Mashable and Yoono for making the event such a great...
2 tags
Learning Game Design: Goals
I’ve only just begun to scratch the surface of designing casual/social games but during the course of learning I’ve discovered a number of key differences between web application design (my forte) and game design. My plan is to pass this information along as a series of posts I’ll call “Learning Game Design” (I know, not very creative). So I’ll kick it off with...
July 2008
3 posts
2 tags
Challenges For Game Designers (Book)
Brenda Brathwaite (whose blog should be a staple in any game designer’s feed reader) and Ian Schreiber (who’s blog I have not read, and who’s feed I can’t seem to subscribe to) have just finished a new book entitled Challenges For Game Designers. I just pre-ordered a copy and I’m excited to check it out. Here’s the product description from Amazon…...
2 tags
Tick Featured in Two New UI Design Books
Tick has been spotted in the pages of two new UI design books. The Web Designers Idea Book from Design Meltdown, and Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks by Luke Wroblewski (forward by Jared Spool). UPDATE: Actually it appears that we’re being criticized in Web Form Design. I’m not sure I fully agree with the author’s view on web form widths, but everyone is entitled to their...
1 tag
What have I been up to?
You may have noticed that I haven’t been writing in the last month or so. I wanted to give you a little insight as to why. As I’ve written about in the past, I’ve been watching the social gaming wave very closely. I’m a huge fan of MMO’s, and with the rise of this new medium (building games on top of an existing social platform) I feel it has finally evolved into...
May 2008
1 post
1 tag
22 Game Design-ish Blogs
I’ve been amassing a rather large collection of game design related blogs. I thought I share a few of my daily reads. Some are directly related to game design, others indirectly. If you’re in the web space and you’re not following what is happening in the social/casual/mmo gaming space, you’re missing out. Here are a few places to get you going… Lightspeed Venture...
April 2008
3 posts
1 tag
Choosing a Programming Language to Learn
Over the past few weeks I’ve been doing a lot of research on what programming language to learn. Being that my programming knowledge is limited, many of the arguments for or against a language were in terms that were beyond my experience level. You end up with a Catch-22 situation. You need experience to chose the language, but you need to learn a language to garner that experience....
2 tags
Old Portfolio Work
I posted a bunch of old portfolio work to Flickr for those of you that are interested. Most of this is agency work so the end product was not always what I envisioned. In any case, here it is…the good, bad and the ugly.
1 tag
Sharing and Communicating on the Interwebs
We’re currently in what can be described as a social gold rush. Services come and go fast enough to make your head spin. The hardest part for me has been trying to create logical structure and organization in my mind for how all these services are arranged in my life. I tend to need to add rules and logic to anything that I adopt. Every in its place. I thought it would be interesting to...
March 2008
2 posts
1 tag
Jetblue Confusion
The JetBlue kiosk is pretty amazing. It’s clean, simple and is a joy to use. I especially LOVE the very gratifying audible click when you select options. So much more effective with a little mid-bass added versus the” treble-y” mouse click. But I did notice one flaw on a recent trip. Why don’t the seat symbols follow the direction of the cabin? Outside of this small detail,...
1 tag
Perception of Designers and Developers
While debating with Omar, our Lead Developer at Scrapblog, about a small chunk of UI, I noticed something interesting about the dynamic between a designer and developer. A designer trusts his eyes regardless of the logic behind the scenes, while a developer trusts the logic regardless of what he sees. In this situation I was making the case that the interface element in question was not properly...
February 2008
6 posts
2 tags
Scrapblog Featured on Adobe.com
We get to work pretty closely with the folks at Adobe given that Scrapblog is considered one of the slickest Flex apps currently out there. This has been one of the cooler unexpected perks. We have great access to the product teams and even get to participate in the development of yet to be released products (my lips are sealed). They recently interviewed the Scrapblog team regarding our use of...
1 tag
Against Happiness
My girlfriend Heather is a huge fan of The Secret. I however, am not. I am completely turned off and very skeptical of the glossy, Oprah-fied marketing campaign surrounding a very simple concept. Having said that, it may come as no surprise to you that I have often been labeled as negative. I’ve always argued that what seems like negativity is actually criticality. My actions are always in...
2 tags
My $.02: What's a Blog? (Seth Godin)
I agree with this post from Seth Godin, and since comments are off I’ll add my $.02 here. I think that following the “musts” is an act of fear and laziness. I’ll be the first to say that people perform better within the boundaries of constraints, but not if you use them as a crutch. The bigger the company, the less risk they’ll take. “Musts” keep big...
1 tag
Future of Web Apps Workshop: Web App Nip Tuck
Myself, Alex, Caleb and Carlos will be speaking at this year’s Future of Web Apps in Miami. Sweet! We’re doing a morning workshop (Feb 28th) appropriately entitled Web App Nip Tuck. Here is the blurb from the FOWA website: “One of the most recognized aspects of Scrapblog is its ease of use and dead simple workflow. But achieving that can mean a lot of reconstructive surgery...
2 tags
The Journey or the Destination?
I read a great post today on Ask the Wizard (via 37signals) regarding the lack of a need for a business model when starting a new project. This is the type of thinking that anyone who wants to build a successful product should consider. Everyone would love to make money with their product, but the truly great products are ones that are created for the journey (the creation of something great),...
1 tag
PackRat Is Hoarding My Attention
If you haven’t already heard, Firewheel (under the moniker of Alamofire) has finally released their long-awaited, ultra-top-secret project. Since they first announced the new project under a veil of secrecy, I’ve been chomping at the bit to find out what it is. Well it’s here, and boy is it a doozy! PackRat is a very simple MMO built on Facebook’s Platform. The basic goal...
January 2008
4 posts
Which one of these is not like the other?
I’m a huge Google Reader fan but they lost a brownie point with this little UI blunder. I’ve been complaining (to myself) about the lack of a “Mark as Unread” link for some time. This frustration was further amplified when I noticed one on the iPhone version. Why would they put one in the iPhone version and not the standard version? Well, today I decided to look a little...
3 tags
Defining the Initial Release
I’ve been diligently working on the IA for my side project and come to the point where I have to make the tough decision as to what will constitute the first release. I could go in one direction that would convey the concept and could be done relatively quickly, but holds back a great deal on the execution. Or I could go for a much more ambitious approach that is closer matched the vision of...
1 tag
My First Lulu Experience
This Christmas, my girlfriend Heather decided that she wanted to publish her father’s novel as a gift to him. I told her that I knew of a hot new self-publishing service called Lulu, and we decided to give it a shot. I don’t have the patience to provide a full detailed review of the process, so I’ll sum it up as briefly as possible. Overall the process was easier than I expected...
1 tag
Brain Crack Rehab
Hi, my name is Mike and I’m an addict. I’m addicted to brain crack. In fact, I’ve been accumulating quite a large stash in the form of a Google Document titled “Ideas”. But sadly, I hit rock bottom last week. This came in the form of watching one of my favorite brain crack “rocks” melt away before my eyes. Last week Match.com launched a new feature called...
December 2007
6 posts
3 tags
Familiarity vs. Innovation
Often times an interface designer will come upon a situation where he/she has discovered a superior, yet unconventional solution to a given design problem. The solution may be one that requires less time, less clicks or simply makes more logical sense, but at the same time may have a learning curve associated with it. Should the designer stick to convention and familiarity regardless of the fact...
4 tags
Doing Well On CommandShift3
I can’t say that I was a huge fan of CommandShift3 upon first impression, but I may have changed my tune a bit. Why? Seems as though Scrapblog, Tick, and Mikegowen.com have been doing quite well. I’m not one to toot my own horn, but since this blog is partly an archive of my achievements, coupled with the fact that my readership is still rather small, I’ll go ahead and do it....
Web Conferences Are Sooo Web 1.0
Like most people that are passionate about the web industry, I try to attend as many conferences as I can throughout the year. But lately I’ve been questioning the format of the conferences, and wonder if we could do better. Being that I stay current with the community and the web in general, its very rare that I learn anything new. There are of course exceptions, but for the most part web...
3 tags
5 Things Application Designers Can Learn from...
Gambling involves betting a portion of money towards the goal of a larger return. This is not unlike what we do when building an application. We select the features we will implement with the hope that those features will form a valuable tool that is greater than the sum of its parts. But the similarities extend further than this. Here are 5 things every application designer could learn from...
1 tag
Yousendit Upload Progress
Let me first say that I am a huge fan of yousendit.com, but I couldn’t resist posting this when I saw it. Don’t worry guys, I still love you!
3 tags
Designing with Blinders On
One of the most common mistakes I see designers make, is letting look-and-feel decisions influence functionality. This is often caused by jumping into a design program too early, and trying to tackle everything at once. The temptation to move a button, or delete a column of data for the sake of aesthetics can seduce even the most seasoned designer. We’re all guilty of it. But in interface...
November 2007
4 posts
3 tags
"Creative Freedom" is an Oxymoron
During my career as a designer I’ve often been bestowed the great and wondrous gift of “creative freedom”. In my earlier days, I waited and waited for this day to arrive…for this was when I was finally going to show the world what I was made of. When that day did come, the excitement and jubilation quickly dissolved as I sat there staring at a blank canvas, panicking and...
1 tag
Thanks!
Just wanted to thank everyone who came out to RefreshMiami last night. I had a great time presenting and I’m glad that the non-designer types were able to get something out of it. Special thanks to Books and Books for being very accommodating and for supplying an absolutely perfect venue. I have a feeling we’ll be going there more often. I’ll be posting the slides in the next few...
1 tag
The iPhone Debate
For the record, here is my response to the endless iPhone versus other “smartphones” debate… If you compare the iPhone to another “smartphone” on the basis of quantity of features, the other phone will probably win in most cases. However, if you compare the them on the basis of the execution of those features (even if they are fewer in number), the iPhone will win...
1 tag
RefreshMiami Tonight
For those interested, I’ll be speaking at RefreshMiami tonight. I am going to give a short presentation on my (informal) process for UI design. RefreshMiami will be held at Books and Books in Coral Gables @ 7:00pm. Hope to see you there!
October 2007
1 post
Lolcat Spotted in SkyMall [Pic]
I was flying home from North Carolina yesterday and I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw this (note the remote)
March 2007
3 posts
1 tag
Center Networks: Interview with Tick Founder,...
Center Networks had a great interview with Kevin about Tick. Read it here.
1 tag
Scrapblog: The Seed of a Community
In case you missed the reference in my previous post, I did a quick write-up on a very interesting installation at the Frog Design party at SXSW and how it relates to communities. You can read the post here.
1 tag
SXSW 2007: The Beginning
This time Friday of last week I was a SXSW virgin…but now, like a teen on prom night, my eyes have been opened to a whole new world, and I’ve been left thoroughly satisfied. Now I’ve been to all type of conferences, but never one with this sort of grouping of backgrounds (interactive/music/film). But this creative ménage à trois is one of pure genius. While I couldn’t stay...
February 2007
5 posts
1 tag
BarCamp Miami
The first BarCamp Miami took place tonight and although I showed up late, I was still able get a little schmoozing in. Alex and Kim did a great job organzing it and I was blown away by the turnout. Here’s a few pics. I was definitely not expecting the amount of people that attended. There was easily 40 people when I arrived, and I heard that at peak time there were about 60. The highlight of...
1 tag
Walk for Autism Research
The last leg of my insanely grueling schedule was the Walk for Austim Research at Crandon Park in Key Biscayne. I was amazed to see how many people turned out for the event. The email said there would be 1500 people, but I’d guess it was more like 3-4 times that amount. I’m getting better about bringing my camera and I snapped a few pictures. I can’t express how much I appreciate...