UX

The User eXperience of Doing Things Well

Posted on by Atanasio Segovia / 0 Comment

Whatever you do, do well. For when you go to the grave, there will be no work or planning or knowledge or wisdom.

~ King Solomon (Ecclesiastes 9:10)

Here’s a story about a Pastry Chef named Joe:

A customer orders a cake and gives Joe the following directions:

  1. Make it look GOOD
  2. It has to taste GOOD
  3. Have it done FAST, like tomorrow

Joe moves forward and begins to bake the cake marching against the deadline. The cake is baked and delivered. It looks, smells and tastes OK, but it is not excellent. As the customer eats a slice of the cake a big smile appears on his face and says “this is good”. Had Joe put more time, planning and resources, the cake would be excellent. “Next time” says Joe. What he doesn’t know is that he will never bake another cake again.

What does this have to do with being a User Experience Designer?

A designer should put a piece of his/her soul into every project. Push with all your might, apply all your knowledge, plan and deliver the best product possible. Imagine this is the last project you will ever complete in your life.

Uncategorized

Perfect GTD Setup Using Tomboy

Posted on by Atanasio Segovia / 0 Comment

Learn how to create the perfect GTD system in 3 steps using nothing but Tomboy notes

Take a look at the final setup in all its majesty

linux gtd

Requirements

  1. Install Tomboy
  2. Be able to read and focus for more than 10 minutes
  3. Have an internet connection 🙂


Step 1: Create Six Notebooks

Create the following 6 notebooks and be sure to pay close attention to the naming convention.

project notebooks

  1. .GTD
  2. Reference A-F
  3. Reference G-M
  4. Reference N-S
  5. Reference T-Z
  6. Someday

Step 2: Creating a bunch of notes in your .GTD notebook

It’s time to create individual notes to hold next actions and context notes. Create the following notes paying close attention to the naming convention.

context notes

  1. ..@na
  2. .@calls
  3. @agenda
  4. @awaiting
  5. @email

All next actions go into one of these 5 notes. I use ..@na as my default next actions list.


Step 3: Awesome Inbox

There is no need to create an inbox since Tomboy’s Unfield Notes section does the trick.


The GTD setup is now completed!

How to maximize this GTD setup.

Dealing with Projects

Create a note for each active project in the GTD notebook. Completed projects are moved to the corresponding reference notebook. Inactive projects live in the someday notebook.

Creating tags for search

Create tags for easy searching using []. For example let’s say I wanted to tag a note with UX and information architecture. The note would have [ux] and [information architecture]. Using [] ensures that one can search for tags and not pick up other content. Cool huh!

Archiving information

Move all completed projects, links to files and articles, notes and more to the corresponding Reference notebook. Tomboy’s search functionality makes it really easy to find stuff.

Dealing with Large Projects

Create a separate notebook for projects that are too large for a single note. Use naming convention to determine where the notebook will appear. For example, append z to the project to force it to bottom of the notebook list.


Going the extra mile with the tombox setup

Using Tomboy notes and dropbox this setup can be used across many computers. This is awesome since one Tomboy and dropbox work in Linux and windows computers. This article covers synchronizing tomboy notes and dropbox, I like to call it tombox. This article walks you through the setup.

Let’s take a look at this legit GTD Linux friendly setup

UX

About Face 3: Chapter 3 Notes

Posted on by Atanasio Segovia / 0 Comment
users

Help a beginner out
There will be users with varying levels of expertise using your software, raging from beginners to experts. Most beginners will become intermediate users and few will become experts.  Focus most of your time, resources and interaction on intermediates.

Beginners will quickly become intermediates, otherwise they will find another activity or product that allows let them do so. To help new users to quickly migrate to the next level provide some instructions, imagine them as being really smart but super busy. The initial help must go away once it is no longer needed. Nobody keeps the training wheels on the bike once they know how to ride it.

Sales, marketing and management will demo the product to customers, partners, who are not familiar with the product. This leads them to have a skew  view of the user community  leading to request such things as wizards or things like Clippy.

About Expert Users
Experts are few in numbers and high on impact compared to the other groups. They will ask for powerful features, can handle added complexity and want shortcuts to everything. Keep them happy but focus on the next group.

Nurture Intermediates
Perpetual intermediates need access to tools, they do not need scope and purpose. Tooltips state function making them perfect for this group. This is the group actually reads documentation. Intermediate users will stick to the same set of tools and functionality and will rarely venture out to try obscure features. Make this set of tools easy to find and remember. Given that they make the bulk of your user community, take care of them.

This post was inspired by David Alfonso.