The best talk I've seen on Agile user research

Our working style has changed rapidly over the past several years. The research that was the cornerstone and used to work, breaks once you are working Agile. Bethany Fong and Miki Konno provide excellent modifications and their deep thinking on the subject and their endorsement of rapid feedback loops adjust perfectly to the faster pace of agile and just in time research.

A Boss or Bossy?

See these two search results and search terms? What the fuck, society. Seriously. What the actual fuck.

Yeah.

 Proctor & Gamble's Pantene is shedding light on this idea that women are called shitty things and they don't deserve it. It's kind of weird having a shampoo brand jumping on the equalist bandwagon, but hey, we should take it from wherever the source, as long as it's genuine.

Thanks popup!

I wanted you to interrupt my presentation with your useful and timely message, VMWare. So, thank you.

An annoying day must include technology

Check out Hyperbole and a Half's Sneaky Hate Spiral : )

Being a great leader

The tough part about leadership is that those with power are highly prone to the kind of behavior that alienates them from others:

Robert Sutton talks about his new book, Good Boss, Bad Boss, and does an amazing job combining research and storytelling to hammer home the problems and responsibility of leaders.

I can hear the theme song now

Travel down the road and back again
Your heart is true
You're a pal and a confidant
And if you threw a party
Invited everyone you knew
You would see
the biggest gift would be
from me
and the card attached would say ...


Favorite picture from a quickie competitor review:

Flat icons for the UX designer

I can't believe, given how often I've had to reinstall Omnigraffle, I haven't yet talked about the icon stencil I always use. OK without further ado, here it is; my favorite UX Omnigraffle stencils.

Webalys Icons - Using placeholders for icons is annoying when you have a good idea about what you want, but don't want to spend the time creating it to get your point across. Especially given the fact that crisp, flat, and modern icons have evolved to become symbols.

Webalys offers a generous icon pack for free as .ai, .eps, .pdf, and through, Omnigraffle .graffle. Hope it's useful. Download 'em here.

Some examples of icons up close

User Friendly, PC Compatible

Babies are designed to learn

After seeing this talk you'll be jealous of the way babies think!

Engaged at work by being happy

Positive psychology is very captivating, why? Um, if you don't know I'm not going to tell you. 

But! If you haven't heard of positive psychology, check out wikipedia's definition 

a scientific understanding and effective interventions to build thriving individuals, families, and communities."^[1] Positive psychologists seek "to find and nurture genius and talent" and "to make normal life more fulfilling",^[2] rather than merely treating mental illness.