One of my earliest UX wins was for Mac System 7. The Finder team wanted to truncate files names with '…' if it wouldn’t fit. I argued that too much critical info would be lost and suggested it be in the middle instead. The Finder team loved it and implemented it later that day. They were so easy to work with. I'd totally forgotten about it until I overheard someone commenting it was an example of Apple's attention to detail. I'd didn't say anything at the time but yeah, that was me ;-)

For years now, I've offered free consulting to any hardware company that has a product with buttons. Why? Because most companies don't have a UX department, and bad UX hurts their bottom line. Tiny and inexpensive changes, like a better label or a simple software tweak, could make a substantial difference. I've written about it here:

Design can be free (part 3) – Scott Jenson

This isn't a gimmick. I'm lucky to be retired and don't want their money. This is just me throwing my hat out there one more time...

Rivian’s chief software officer says in-car buttons are ‘an anomaly’. His basic point is that voice is far better. <sigh> We go through these every few years, you'd think we'd have learned by now: 1. Voice isn't enough Voice is great, and it does have value but it's best when you're alone. There are lots of situations where voice just doesn't work. It's an ADDITIONAL modality, not a REPLACEMENT. #UX #Voice

Elevators are the #UX gift that keeps giving. I just discovered this beauty. On top of that, the door closing times are very slow so it's very helpful to push a close button. I just stood and stared...

I'm going door to door in Lacrosse Wisconsin, helping to answer any questions they might have to make sure they can vote. It's uplifting work, only talking to registered democrats, who are mostly happy to chat, and are totally supportive. It's a win/win. The tech is impressive too. There's a app that tells us which house to knock on, who is there, even if they've already voted so we can skip them. (although it SHOULD be a web page... ;-)

I'm using #LLMs to help me with my UX tasks, working with an LED strip controlled by a dial. I have an ESP32 + LED array, using ChatGPT to create Arduino sketches to control the LEDs. What's nice about this is that I don't have to be an expert in Arduino, I can get the something basic up and running and I can then take it from there. (there is a entire blog post about how horribly wrong it can get even the simplest things but as far as getting something 'approximately there', it's great!) 1/2