❗This post is a rant. We all get caught in our own rabbit holes so don't take it personally. Take the point instead. A growing list of things about data, software, and reality that apparently aren't technical enough to be technical requirements. These are all real
Puberty is that in-between bit between seed stage and a startup working out what it actually needs to be in order to thrive. If you've been in a seed or Series A or B startup, or even an early stage product in a larger company, you will
Oh bloody hell not this again You might be lucky enough (and I do mean lucky) to hear some feedback like this: "well, X is awful, we can't use it at all" They may not say this, but it's what they are communicating. And
When numbers become meaningless Have you ever had to debug an issue without sufficient logs or visibility? Or tried to get a decent case study out of a customer? I've done both and trust me, they can be extremely difficult. Turns out, these are actually the same problem.
I used to think a lot about product management, partly because it's one of the many hats an organisation has ended up labelling me with, and partly because it's that intersection of technology, behaviour and capitalism - linking the micro back to the macro and vice versa.
What happens when a user tells you a system number is wrong? And what happens next? Turns out, a lot - wrong numbers are a very common reason people lose trust in systems - notably when they have to rely on them. But it wasn't the wrong number that lost
When I was a child, a long time ago, I used to play this game. The goal was to successfully assemble a number of goods in a few minutes. Ingredients or parts would come out the top or side, and you'd have to process items and ensure they
Every organisation has people whose job title or duties doesn't describe what they actually do. They're not a failure of org design. I've been that person more times than I can count. It took me an embarrassingly long time to realise that being asked
I spend a lot of time negotiating this in the software world: And if you're wondering why this happens, it's normally because: 1. people aren't talking to people 2. people aren't listening So lots of designers and product people have leapt onto
So, I've explored why APIs need a user experience designed for them. I'm now moving to another area, which is slightly more visible but still pretty damn complex: presenting data. Broadly, I will take you through: * Why people don't trust your data/numbers yet,
Why You Should Ignore Airline Advice Columns As previously written about, I fly too much. This is on average about 40 flights every 12 months. 2025 it's going to end up at 53. I do this because I live on a lovely small island but do also love
I spend a reasonable amount of time talking about systems interacting and how that can influence behaviour in groups (ie organisations). For example, at a certain density of crowd, people en masse behave more like a liquid than like individual beings. This can lead to safety risks. I however want