Author: mpullen

Understanding Project Context: Who are your clients & users?

When I begin a project and start digging in, I need to understand what you know about your clients and users.  A verbal walk-through and a pointer to representative case studies will help kick off the learning process. Any description, profile, or conversations with clients and users will help frame what is known. Tell me about… Continue reading Understanding Project Context: Who are your clients & users?

Understanding Project Context: Who is your competition?

When starting a project it is so easy to jump straight to ideas and potential solutions. Too often it is an afterthought to discuss the competition. Understanding what the competition is and where they are succeeding helps frame the space and the expectations set for the project. Which companies do you regularly encounter today when selling… Continue reading Understanding Project Context: Who is your competition?

Understanding Project Context: What are your current products?

Let’s take an initial look at your products and users. Walk me through end to end like a user interacting with your products. What are the various ways an end user might interact with the company to get their work done? Let’s follow that trail and orient me to your current solutions. Here we can go into… Continue reading Understanding Project Context: What are your current products?

Understanding Project Context: What are the current technologies used?

Given the different products you have as well as the skills in house, describe the technologies you have. Understanding current technologies provides me with a frame of reference for what you are comfortable with and how the organization sees the world. What technology do you use? What are the skill sets of the employees you have? Why was… Continue reading Understanding Project Context: What are the current technologies used?

Understanding Project Context: What business are you in?

Even when I have a lot of experience working within a domain, it is crucial to get the business perspective from you, the client. Beyond your marketing materials and your website to what you really do. Understanding the direction and focus of your business will help frame the solutions we explore. What business are you in?… Continue reading Understanding Project Context: What business are you in?

Understanding Project Context: Who are the players?

At the earliest stage of a project, it is helpful to think about all the players. Most projects are not done in isolation. (Or shouldn’t be.)  Consider who will be impacted by your project throughout the larger company. Pull up an org chart and identify the following: Who are the immediate people on the project… Continue reading Understanding Project Context: Who are the players?

Understanding Project Context: What is the problem?

When I am brought in on a project, I initially meet with the product owner and product managers. This is the beginning of our project and you have a problem you are looking to solve. I need to learn more about this problem so where do we begin? With Problem Definition. Let’s begin by defining… Continue reading Understanding Project Context: What is the problem?

Frictionless Update: 2014 Lessons Learned

2014 was a busy year of change and lessons learned. I consulted with companies new and established, joined a start-up full time, and even contracted on projects. These experiences taught me more about the value I provide to clients, and the work I find most satisfying. As I met with potential clients and discussed their… Continue reading Frictionless Update: 2014 Lessons Learned

Frictionless Tech & Design: Logo Design

Tech & Design While exploring principles of logo design, I discovered these eight criteria for judging good logos, according to Craig Von Kolaar. Von Kolaar specializes in marketing for non-profits but I believe these concepts can be applied universally when looking to create a strong logo. aesthetically pleasing distinctive memorable timeless scalable simple enough for… Continue reading Frictionless Tech & Design: Logo Design

Frictionless Clients: 2014

Clients A year well spent. I worked with clients in a wide variety of industries and developed a successful working relationship with the best UI developer I know, Doug Ross. My initial collaboration with his consultancy, OnVelocity, was for an education company seeking to develop software for standardized testing. Together we designed and developed an… Continue reading Frictionless Clients: 2014

Frictionless Meetups: Onion.io

Meetups As a Mentor at startup accelerator Techstars (Boston) I get to meet and work with the some great startup companies. While many are exploring cutting edge technologies, others offer interesting creative products. This past spring, the Internet of Things (IoT) caught my eye. Imagine “smart” hotels, where the front desk can manage everything from air… Continue reading Frictionless Meetups: Onion.io

Frictionless Tech & Design: Being your UI Framework Team

Trends in web technology tend to be fickle. Every day there are new technologies, libraries and frameworks to build the next generation of UI. Javascript UI frameworks I have collected a group of talented UI architects and UI developers to curate the best of the open-source stack for enterprise software development. Imagine a tested, scalable… Continue reading Frictionless Tech & Design: Being your UI Framework Team

Frictionless Clients: High Stakes Assessment Tests

High-stakes assessment testing is a big deal, for both students and the industry. Nationwide, teachers and students know the stress of the increasingly important state educational assessments. Here in Massachusetts, its the MCAS. These tests are long and complicated, and because they have been traditionally delivered via paper, inflexible in design and delivery. A new… Continue reading Frictionless Clients: High Stakes Assessment Tests

Frictionless Meetups: Litographs

As a Mentor at Boston startup accelerator Techstars, I have the opportunity to meet and work with the some great startup companies. While many are exploring cutting edge technologies, others offer interesting creative products. One company I found intriguing and fun is Litographs. Litographsconverts the text of books to shirts, totebags and posters. Do you… Continue reading Frictionless Meetups: Litographs

Boston Fintech Dec 2013 Demo Day

Boston Fintech Dec 2013 Demo Day Ten companies from the Boston area came and demoed their products and talked about their companies to a crowd of about 50 people on a dark and messy New England evening. We met in an interesting and awkward space on Summer Street just over the bridge from downtown Boston.… Continue reading Boston Fintech Dec 2013 Demo Day

Top 3 Technology Combinations for Interaction Design

Top 3 Technology Combinations for Interaction Design As an interaction designer, I am fascinated by technologies that can be brought together to improve a person’s overall experience. In recent years there are several combinations of technologies that really seem to have potential to improve and simplify the way we interact in the world. Here are… Continue reading Top 3 Technology Combinations for Interaction Design

Yahoo Logo font set

Yahoo is going through a process to find a new logo. In the first couple of days I was excited with the idea to show 30 different logos. I am not impressed. It looks like someone is testing out their font set on the word processor. What I was expecting was some play with the… Continue reading Yahoo Logo font set

Pegasus Collaborative: Where the unicorns come to play

Oh how many times do you read that job description and wonder what kind of unicorn they are looking for? So many job descriptions and so many articles have been written on the topic: Unicorn, Shmunicorn: Be a Pegasus How To Hire The Best Designer For Your Team Stop talking about unicorn The Unicorn Designer… Continue reading Pegasus Collaborative: Where the unicorns come to play

SharePoint leaves me a bloody mess

SharePoint is difficult. It is hard to use, confusing to set up and inconsistent. Now that I am done telling you what you already know, let me walk you through an inconsistency. Recently I was working at a client site. They asked me to post my documents on Microsoft’s SharePoint so that everyone in the company can… Continue reading SharePoint leaves me a bloody mess

Have kids design their own solutions to problems

I have to admit that I found this article to be quite grating as a blatant free advertisement for frog design. They are a fantastic design firm but Fast Company is so enamored with them that they post an article that is an infomercial. I guess it is a good thing that it was posted… Continue reading Have kids design their own solutions to problems

Mobile first or workflow first?

Mobile first was suggested as a means to help an organization build both for mobile devices as well as the desktop application. The attempts at taking fully featured applications and wedging them into the mobile device did not work. Trying to take something with few constraints and simplifying to something with greater constraints seldom works. In this… Continue reading Mobile first or workflow first?