Disqus - Latest Comments for FZbear

Re: Map of the Design Landscape in Full Resolution

D Stephen Haynes — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 01:49:00 -0000

Sorry. Web 2.0 cut my post in half.

I was saying, from an IT Guy's perspective, I see the term Web 2.0 and cringe. I see it more as marketing hype than real technology that was created or developed. Maybe it means more in the design world, so if that's the case, disregard. :-)

Also, I'm not sure what the significant change is for Mobile Phones / Devices in 2007. If that's for the iPhone, then I would agree, but it's not clear to me from the picture.

Re: Map of the Design Landscape in Full Resolution

D Stephen Haynes — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 01:46:48 -0000

There may be some things in computing that might be helpful to include. The HP-150 was the first commercially available Touchscreen computer. This impacted future technologies such as the iPhone. And what about those good-old Silicon Graphics workstations? Weren't those all the rage with the design community? I remember seeing those beasts in college, and I thought they were cool. Of course, today's computers put those SGI machines to shame. Still, I think there are a few more computing options out there that impacted design. What about the tablet input devices? Digital Photography?

I see reference to Bill Smith and Six Sigma, but I don't see reference to Deming and his work in the Quality arena. Is that relevant?

There's quite a bit to take in, but I think this is fantastic! Thanks so much for sharing!

Re: Designer’s Toolbelt: Parallels

D Stephen Haynes — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 01:10:37 -0000

Been running VMware since shortly after it came out. I haven't upgraded to VMware 3.0, but I can't wait to do so. VMware's "Coherence" mode is called Unity Mode on VMware. The one thing I'm looking forward to on VMware Fusion 3 is running Windows apps without having to launch Windows. I'm curious to see how that impacts processing on the Mac.

Either way, with VMware Fusion and Parallels, it's a no-brainer to have a Mac these days. You get the best of all worlds, and you don't have to compromise with a shoddy computer.

Just be careful of viruses. MS now has a free virus program for home users. You can get it at: http://www.microsoft.com/se...

Re: Toner Moaner Part 2

D Stephen Haynes — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 03:27:27 -0000

I've been happy, for the most part, with my HP OfficeJet Pro L7780. It prints until the cartridge is completely out of ink, then it stops printing once the ink is gone. It will let me replace the cartridge mid-print and continue where it left off.

Of course, it gives early-warning messages WAY too early. Still, I've been very pleased with the toner usage. My biggest complaint is the driver. There was a driver update over a year ago that makes all of the pages print slightly skewed (rotated counter-clockwise on the page). HP won't release their old driver back to me, so I'm screwed until I buy a new printer. BOO!

Re: In the Details: Lefty

D Stephen Haynes — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 02:36:35 -0000

Anything that requires the intricate use of a mouse should probably be done on the desktop, in my book. I hold off on those tasks until I can sit in front of the big screen with the mouse.

I've been using the Mac trackpad for years, so I'm totally used to it. It took me about a month to get completely familiar with the new trackpad, but now it's a pain to go back to the old style on old MacBooks and PowerBooks. I couldn't imagine being without it. Then again, I'm crazy that way. :-)

Logitech makes a rechargeable mouse with a micro receiver for the USB port. Check out their Performance Mouse MX. I've had good luck with the Logitech mice, and I prefer them over the Kensington models.

Re: Lap Happy

D Stephen Haynes — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 02:19:33 -0000

Some additional ideas for accessories:

1. Multiple power adaptors. One for travel that you can plug into an airplane power jack or a car cigarette lighter is great. Just having an extra block around the house, one for your desk area and one for travel, makes life simple when taking the laptop with you.

2. A MobileMe account is great for syncing contacts, calendar, bookmarks, and keychain data between the desktop and laptop. You can also sync widgets, dock items, mail accounts and rules, notes, and preferences using MobileMe.

3. A Mobile Broadband card is great for when you need Internet access in a strange city. The drawback is the $60/mo subscription charge for 5GB/mo. Or, just wait for tethering on the iPhone.

4. I would say always have a spare battery on hand, but the new laptops have the battery built-in. There are third-party battery packs to charge your laptop while you're away from a power source, but they can be pricey.

5. I know this sounds like overkill, but two laptop cases. One larger one for carrying your Macbook and all essentials along with meeting supplies and notes or whatever. The other, smaller one, is basically for the laptop and the power adaptor and maybe a note folio or something. One is mean and slim for meetings and the other is big and bulky for long-range traveling or bigger meetings/conferences. Better yet are bigger cases that have a compartment that slips out for just the laptop. You can take the "laptop sleeve" as your smaller case and put the sleeve back into the big case when you're done.

While I can't claim your 18 years, I can go back 15 years to my first Mac (IIsi, Performa 6100CD, PB3400, Dual G4 867, 1st Gen 12" PB, and my current MacPro/Unibody MacBook). I've been doing the dual desktop/laptop setup for almost 7 years. The laptop helps me to be more productive when I'm sitting in front of the TV or on the road.

Plus, I get a kick out of clients wondering how I'm going to run their Windows environment with my Mac. I flip the laptop around and show them Windows running on VMware Fusion. Why buy two computers when I just need one that runs everything?

And I DO remember your first Mac. :-) Seems like a lifetime ago.

Re: 10/GUI

D Stephen Haynes — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 00:48:39 -0000

When Apple moved to the low-profile keyboard on all of their keyboards, it made sense to me that Apple would move toward a touch-pad type interface for the keyboard in the future. Sure, the low-profile keys took a little getting used to, but Apple is smart in transitioning users to lower and lower profile keys until they're left with just a surface to type on. I believe they're working on tactile responsiveness so they can replicate the experience of typing on a keyboard, but with a touchpad input area.

Then again, I could be totally wrong. Still, all of the signs are pointing toward a large touch-pad like keyboard interface for Macs in the future.

But I agree with you on 10/GUI. How can I use it to make tasks easier? How can I use it to interface with the computer more easily. I would think eye-tracking devices would be more beneficial. Look there, cursor moves there. Blink to click on the word. That type of thing.

Hey, we need more blinking when we work with our computers. Stop the red-eye! :-)

Re: Tales from the Field: Data Entry Automation and Validation

D Stephen Haynes — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 02:50:56 -0000

Yeah, I think it's more of a business rule that needs to be modified, because it's a requirement to have a start time for the majority of cases before they're sent to the field. Otherwise, you have situations where sales isn't setting customer expectations on start times, and it causes headaches with the field managers.

One of the main reasons for putting this system in place is to hold sales accountable for what they promise to the customer. This specific scenario is where sales asks for a start time, and the customer can't answer until probably the day of the job. I would love to add a checkbox or something that signifies that sales at least tried to obtain a start time, but the client doesn't want to add more fields, because they're afraid of confusing everyone with too many fields. I get that concept, but there comes a time where you have to somehow tell the system details of the transaction at hand. The system can't figure everything out when key pieces of information are missing.

We found two more bugs with this specific scenario, just today. Bottom line is, you can design a perfect system for the business, but it will fail if the business still tries to apply broken processes to the system. I've seen it over and over with SAP implementations, so it's no surprise. Time to start politicking and working this from the business process optimization angle.

Either way, I'm TOTALLY on-board for smarter forms and fields for end users to use and perform their jobs. Simple, organized page-flow makes a world of difference, and I don't think people get how much work goes into a simple form. But then again, that's the point. :-)

Re: Flashing the iPhone?

D Stephen Haynes — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 02:35:51 -0000

Yeah, the reason behind this is mainly because of security. Theoretically, someone could generate malicious code and run/execute that over Flash. Plus, I think Apple is pushing for open standards and such in HTML 5 that supposedly makes Flash obsolete.

Re: Tales from the Field: Data Entry Automation and Validation

D Stephen Haynes — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 01:50:43 -0000

This is probably one of the biggest challenges I face when I'm designing a system for a client. You're never going to know 100% of the business cases for the application, and you don't want to lock yourself into a system that prevents the user from performing a required action for those few cases that are overlooked or so uncommon that nobody remembered to mention them when I was gathering requirements. Because of the unknown, I tend to target 80% of the business cases in my design and plan workarounds for anything else that might come along. In reality, I probably hit closer to 95% of business cases being caught.

Still, how do you create a field that should be a static data element for the majority of the time, but it needs to be dynamic for say 1% of the time?

Let me give an example. I have a scheduling tool I'm working on for a client. In most cases, they have a start time. I have a field for the day, date, and time. All of these are static elements, and I know the finite set of possibilities for each field. My problem comes when they need something more flexible in their start time such as, "Start when I tell you to (most likely just before you need to perform the work)."

In this example, I can't leave the scheduled start fields blank, because the system double-checks each job to ensure there are start and stop times on each item on the schedule. Without a start, the line errors out as needing attention, or "Fill in your start time, or I can't send this job out to the field."

My first reaction was to just put a "TBD" as an acceptable response in the field, but the alpha TBD isn't accepted in a numeric field. Putting 0:00 as the time makes the program bomb out, so I can't use that. Or maybe I've gone down a rabbit hole that I just need to pull back out of and re-think.

Re: Worth a Mint

D Stephen Haynes — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 12:26:43 -0000

That might be great news, indeed. Thanks for posting this.

Intuit, like most mainstream SW developers, treats the Mac as the step-child it would rather ignore. Lately, Quicken 2007 seems to never connect to banks, and I think it has more to do with updates on the bank side than anything on my side.

QuickBooks for Mac is completely lacking, and I can't understand why I have to purchase QuickBooks for PC (running on VMWare) to use QuickBooks for business. I wish Intuit would give the Mac attention like Adobe does. Maybe this will change in time, but I think most applications are going to be web-based in the near future.

Once that happens, it'll just be a matter of your browser not being compatible. And on that front, MS LOVES to lock out non-Windoze OS access by only using IE for many of its professional/business sites. VERY frustrating, and another reason why I steer clients away from MS solutions whenever I can.

Long live the Mac revolution!!! :-)

Re: Toner Moaner

D Stephen Haynes — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 01:10:05 -0000

It's pretty standard in the industry to sell the printer below cost and then make that up with consumables. Although, it is strange that the printer doesn't give you an accurate gage of tones that is left. It's one more way to cut the cost of the unit, I guess.

Re: Pedestrian Channelizing Devices

D Stephen Haynes — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 02:21:14 -0000

I thought it was those little flashing yellow lights that line the crosswalk. You know, the ones that activate when a pedestrian enters the crosswalk, then stay on for like a minute after the pedestrian leaves the crosswalk? They're annoying, because you're waiting for the pedestrian to cross when they crossed a minute ago.

Re: Back to Basics: Function Valet

D Stephen Haynes — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 14:57:36 -0000

But then, isn't that a sign of good design? When the user doesn't realize how easy it is to use, because they're using the product without getting stuck in it? :-)

Re: Assaulted by Batteries

D Stephen Haynes — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 14:54:52 -0000

It's the different chemical make-up of each battery that drives the different requirements. Some companies are trying to come up with the best chemical combination to make a battery that lasts the longest in the most compact space. Others don't have a space requirement, so it can be bigger, but it must hold a charge that gives more power over a shorter amount or time. Or maybe you need less power over a longer amount of time. There are so many variables, and each device has its own power requirements.

Hence, you have different types of batteries with different requirements.

Maybe one day it will all change, but companies don't necessarily have an incentive to make a better battery. You forget about how to care for that specific battery, and they make money on you buying a new battery pack.

Re: Booyah? I say boo.

D Stephen Haynes — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 14:36:33 -0000

Or just build it, and they will come? LOL! It's a fantastic "root" idea, but it sounds like their vision of how it should work is wrong.

Hmmm... Maybe I should brush-up on objective C and write it myself! :-)

Re: Death by a Thousand Cuts

D Stephen Haynes — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 11:46:10 -0000

That's what the personal assistant is for! :-)

I feel ya, Jack. I wonder how people get through their lives with all the time it takes to deal with phone trees and such. I've found the e-mail/web interfaces to be much more productive if it's not a time-sensitive issue.

Then again, I think most people just chuck the item that's not working and buy a new one. Either that, or they just don't repair it and go on with what is working. They care, but not enough to do much about it.

I find that my clients report problems weeks or months after the fact, and they just don't care. Just last week, I had a client with a missing shift key that finally called after months of not having a left shift key on his laptop. Then I get a call about an Ethernet port not working. The WiFi and Mobile Broadband work, so the user just ignored it and used what did work.

So not that it's an excuse, but I think people just don't care enough. Beyond that, where do I give constructive feedback for a poorly designed system? If I'm really angry, I'll go looking for it. But why spend that time and energy being upset when I can just move on? So maybe designers exclude or hide the feedback mechanisms so people will give up. From a customer service perspective, I wouldn't want to be inundated with trivial complaints, but as a business analyst, I'd like to see feedback on the process.

Re: Back to Basics: Greater Flexibility = Greater Complexity

D Stephen Haynes — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 10:05:38 -0000

When we're designing a system to meet the needs of our clients, we look at the business processes and what the system will be capable of doing for the business. We try to capture the majority of business cases that the business will run through, but we use the "80/20 rule" of handling 80% of the cases and finding manual work-arounds for the other 20%. Not only is it too costly to develop for that last 20%, it's incredibly difficult to investigate, survey, and even uncover them in the first place.

When I was in my 20's, I hated the 80/20 Rule with a passion. I thought, "Why don't you always strive for perfection?" Then I started having to get funding for my projects, and I realized how it's just not worth the effort or cost. Most users don't care, and management doesn't want to spend the money on it.

Realistically? We develop for about 90% of business cases, and 10% of that is documented as special case scenarios that we don't include in the main docs for the finished product. Like you said, it confuses the mainstream user, but the functionality is worth it for the few users that handle those special cases. Of course, justifying development for those cases falls on the client. Still, we like to provide options.

Re: In the Details: Alarming iCal

D Stephen Haynes — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 11:32:33 -0000

My gripe is that I want to tell iCal to default a new entry with an alarm that alerts me with message and sound 12 hours prior to every event. You would think that you could set a default setting in the preferences, but it's not there. You can set a default for fields on a contact in Address Book, but you can't set a default for your events in iCal. Little inconsistencies between Apple applications like that frustrate me.

Re: I Can Do That

D Stephen Haynes — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 03:24:14 -0000

Did that supervisor ever take that statement back? Did he ever realize the glaring error of that statement? That's just WAY too funny. I can't believe that someone would tell YOU, of ALL people, something like that.

Re: Current Design Issues

D Stephen Haynes — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 03:38:47 -0000

OK, so I'm not a designer, but I work with them. We outsource work to designers on an as-needed basis. Sometimes, it's hard for us to convince our clients to hire a designer, because they see that as extra cost to them. I know a good design from the start will save headaches down the road, and potential re-work.

So from someone on the fringe of the design world, I would vote for Making a Business Case for Design and Design & Business.

Re: In the Details: ADDress

D Stephen Haynes — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 02:11:22 -0000

I use this all the time. Still, this is much better than not having it at all. I have seen cases where this function creates a duplicate Address Book entry for the contact, but it's rare (for example, you have me in Address Book as Stephen Haynes, but my e-mail says my name is D Stephen Haynes, so a duplicate entry is created).

I'm wondering if Apple thought of a "swap out" feature, but there could be so many options to "swap out" the e-mail with. I have multiple e-mail addresses for some people, and I retain old addresses in order to search for old e-mails from a specific person. I use custom labels all the time for both e-mail addresses and phone numbers in Address Book.

One day, MacOS will just know what you're thinking and do it. :-)

Re: In the Details: Attach Files

D Stephen Haynes — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 02:15:51 -0000

How do you like JIRA for bug tracking and its functionality in your organization? We were looking at it for some work for a potential client where they wanted us to design a piece of software that integrated with JIRA. I'm always on the lookout for a good bug tracking/PM/workflow system, and I've not received a lot of feedback on JIRA itself.

Your thoughts?

Re: Transparency

D Stephen Haynes — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 02:11:11 -0000

So am I barking up the wrong tree when I say I feel lost in CS3? I learned Dreamweaver in Studio MX, but I've lost my familiarity with the tool. It seems like the most recent Acrobat is even more confusing.

I know these are powerful tools, but I just get lost in what it will do. Let's not get started on Office 2007 for PC.

Re: Touch My Shag

D Stephen Haynes — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 17:40:54 -0000

Why, it's where you place your cheek when you're hugging your car. :-)