http://www.burnimage.com Interaction Designer, User Researcher, Software Developer Mon, 18 Jul 2011 02:35:39 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Hi Google... Please make creating a folder in Reader easier :) Here's a quick user flow gone wrong: So here's my Reader homepage. Gee, I sure do have a lot of automobile related feeds hanging around at the bottom, where should I create a folder for these guys? Probably one of these places ... http://www.burnimage.com/2011/07/adventures-in-usability-adding-a-folder-in-google-reader/ [ This is a re-post of my older original article at EchoUser here ] It’s 7:00 a.m. and I am crammed into a bus packed with commuters.  As I try gingerly to prevent my face from rubbing against the armpit of an adjacent passenger, I awkwardly suspend my clipboard over my ... http://www.burnimage.com/2010/10/adventures-in-service-design-public-transit/ A recent challenge I faced while working on our product was a requirement that surfaced from a potential client who asked that they be able to use our web-based application as-is, but host their own data internally (in other words, run their own database separate from the one all of ... http://www.burnimage.com/2010/03/connecting-to-multiple-databases-from-ruby-on-rails/ I can't help but comment on the Tom McCoy article on Interaction Design being a dead-end job. Interaction Design is certainly no more weak a profession than Graphic Design, Industrial Design, Photography, or any other creative profession. Any single individual could take it upon him or herself to circumvent ... http://www.burnimage.com/2009/05/interaction-design-is-dead-as-a-career/ As one of my rails projects has finally gone to production, one of the more important things I needed consider was how to properly monitor user activity in my application. Beyond tracking things via google analytics, I wanted to establish some custom log files (beyond spitting everything out into production.log). My ... http://www.burnimage.com/2009/03/ruby-on-rails-custom-logging/ I was utterly shocked to read of Chrichton's death today, and I couldn't help but wonder what his own feelings on the matter might have been. Regardless of whether or not you have enjoyed his books, it is clear his life exploration has always been at the limits of science and ... http://www.burnimage.com/2008/11/michael-crichton-dies-medical-science-disappoints/ How much would you be willing to pay to instantly quit smoking? Think about it carefully, the maximum sum of money, to walk away from cigarettes for good. I was at the birthday party of a colleague of mine, who proclaimed that his "birthday resolution" was to quit smoking. All of ... http://www.burnimage.com/2008/10/quit-smoking-for-cash/ Guerrila Design is something Felix and I have been kicking around as a marketing / sales strategy for a while. While his posting (which you should read) has a slightly sour antic about it, I definitely think he's onto something. There is a certain blaze-ness when it comes to big companies ... http://www.burnimage.com/2008/10/entrepreneurealorg-guerrilla-design/ We haven't quite reached our goal yet. This shot definitely shows a little excitement (314 unique visits) after our initial launch, likely from word of mouth between friends. Hopefully our little marketing efforts (currently under way) will make this chart a little more interesting as election day approaches! http://www.burnimage.com/2008/10/not-quite-there/ Our little social experiment VoteTheQuote [ www.votethequote.com ] has launched! We've been dedicating a few evenings to this little project of hours, and it is finally ready for public consumption! It's a pretty simple concept, we hope you like it. http://www.burnimage.com/2008/10/vote-the-quote-has-launched/