Porcelain Duck

Tackling UX copy one lipsum at a time

ian — Fri, 08 Apr 2016 14:18:00 +0000

Yesterday I wrote about taking a stab at something you weren’t sure about. I had in mind a UX and wireframe problem I was trying to solve, but it could be applied more broadly. This is more specific about wireframes and using lorum ipsum as placeholder text. One of two things are likely to happen: Client: […]

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Making progress with assumptions

ian — Thu, 07 Apr 2016 21:37:33 +0000

Working on some early-stage wireframes recently I came to a crossroad – choose to skip over some pieces where I don’t have full information yet, or make a couple assumptions and take a stab at it. I took a stab at it. It won’t all be right but it let me keep going, work some […]

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Patterns of 10X content

ian — Wed, 06 Apr 2016 17:53:32 +0000

I first head about 10X content from a great Moz article titled Why Good Unique Content Needs to Die. It means content that’s ten times better than the top result on Google. That’s how you’ll get to the top, “good” content isn’t going to cut it. Marketers make up BS words all the time, but I quite like […]

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Pomodoro is one of those foolish-sounding productivity things that actually works for me

ian — Tue, 05 Apr 2016 12:03:36 +0000

I hesitated to write this because some of these productivity things sound like something you’d see on Dr. Oz. But I digress. Pomodoro is pretty simple. The technique helps you keep focused by giving you 25 minutes to work on a certain task: Pick a task Do it for 25 minutes Take a 5 min break (or […]

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Watch-first design

ian — Mon, 04 Apr 2016 17:22:29 +0000

When smartphones started to take off, we embraced responsive design. Then came mobile-first design. More than a tactic, it was a way of thinking – with less space, you have to make decisions on what’s the most important content and functionality. The bigger screen shouldn’t be a huge departure, maintaining those priorities and shifting what’s […]

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Will the Golden Age of Uber stay golden?

ian — Fri, 01 Apr 2016 20:02:44 +0000

Uber’s getting a lot of love lately here in Toronto. Not without its share of hate, the love outweighs it, and people are voting with their virtual wallets. Will Uber’s service quality eventually devolve to that of cabs? It’s been a much better experience for me, and I’m not alone. Sure I’ve had some nice […]

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On VR

ian — Thu, 31 Mar 2016 14:27:04 +0000

Hey, I know virtual reality is going to be super fun. It’s a futuristic thing to imagine being inside a video game (finally, am I right?). There’s also something sort of sad about the thought of covering over your eyes and sitting on the couch by yourself while your bills are automatically drawn out of your bank […]

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Be nice to Siri

ian — Wed, 30 Mar 2016 11:39:42 +0000

AI. Robots. The Machines. Some people think they kill all humans, others say a utopian society, while most think somewhere in between or are just over there in Camp Who Cares Just Do Everything for Me and Don’t Take My Job. I’m not taking any chances — I always say thanks to Siri. Though she currently […]

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Podcamp Halifax 2015: Won’t somebody please think of the user?!

ian — Sun, 18 Jan 2015 17:30:25 +0000

Thanks everyone who came to my session at Podcamp Halifax (it’s a tough choice, I was tempted to go see Jeff White instead of my own talk). My goal was to leave you with ideas and tactics for improving ux that you can take away and use, regardless of your job title. My presentation deck […]

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UX writing and the Tale of the Exploding Pizza

ian — Sat, 03 Jan 2015 03:51:44 +0000

In a moment of hunger-induced laziness I turned to the Domino’s iPhone app. A large unlimited-topping pizza for $12.99? Sounds pretty good to me. I was hungry and dead set on getting the most value I could out of this thing. Turns out, as it often does, that unlimited actually wasn’t. Why does this matter? […]

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