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Ask “What if” Questions
What if we could travel 5 miles in less than 5 minutes? What if we could watch movies in our own homes? What if we could buy things for a whole day without using any paper money? What if we could communicate with friends on the other side of the world without leaving the house?…
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LinkedIn looks so fresh & clean clean
One of my little delights in life comes when I see a website or tool that I use has been refreshed. This morning, I was surprised to notice that LinkedIn has a new look. Check it out: There’s a nice entry up on the LinkedIn Blog that talks about the three major changes: System Navigation…
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"Pretty" Software Applications
One of the most difficult expectations for me to overcome with respect to my coworkers is the idea that I’m here to simply make the software look pretty. It’s difficult for so many to understand. I do understand principles of typography, layout, color, and design in general…and yes, I do have the ability to decorate…
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On the Misleading Lexicon of Agile Development
Whatever happened to clear, consistent language? Why do we use words that have inconsistent meaning in contexts where they’ll be unfamiliar? Why, oh why? Day in and day out I work with clients in an Agile development setting. I use words that have been trained into me, that I’ve been taught over and over again.…
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Agile Design, a response to my friend’s quandary
This evening Kynthia‘s thoughts got me thinking. Among other things, she said: “[W]e design heads get in this place where, just because we wouldn’t be caught dead releasing something into the wild, we think there is nothing to learn from it.” My brain took her thoughts on a tangent and went this way: So since…
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Agile anti-pattern: Developer-focused retrospectives
On most software projects, there is a far higher percentage of developers on a team than any other role. In general, this works to the team’s advantage. The developers, after all, are the ones who make what everybody else works for come alive. In a retrospective, however, it is important that no one group of…
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It’s Gotta Start with Imagination
It’s true, there’s definitely a time and a place for getting one’s hands dirty. Sometimes there’s just no way around digging into the details and making things right. Sometimes, even as a designer, you’re going to have to play with the CSS to get the alignment right, because if not you, who will? Still, it’s…
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The Design of CruiseControl.rb
If you’ve heard me talk about work lately, you have probably heard me talk about an Open Source project I’ve been working on with a handful of other folks at ThoughtWorks. Previous to now, it’s been “privately public,” existing on servers where people could get to it, but not so public that we were letting…
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On Iteration
“It’s not an iteration if you only do it once!” – Fred Sampson, in the UPA Voice Developers & designers: Please, please don’t just implement your first idea. Think about it for a few minutes. Sketch it on paper a few times a few different ways. Nine times out of ten you’ll find that your…
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Code Poetry
What a brilliant poem. Read it for yourself: StubbornSoft & MammothSoft