“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication,” claims the marketing brochure for the Apple II. This philosophy and Steve Jobs’ quest for elegant, simple solutions drove much of Apple’s success. As quoted in the Harvard Business Review, Jobs articulated the issues that face many product development teams, saying that “you get into the problem, and you see […]

[Reposted from DealerRefresh.com: dealerrefresh.com/https-everywhere-what-it-means-for-your-dealership/] Google uses over 200 factors to determine website relevancy , and now HTTPS has been thrown into the mix, with a rule that Google is calling “HTTPS Everywhere.” From keyword relevance and backlinks to social shares and web page loading time, Google uses its ranking signals to determine which web sites rise […]

[Reposted from Dealer Communications Zine: http://dealer-communications.com/technology/ten-simple-ways-to-make-your-dealership-more-secure-against-hacks-viruses-and-malware/] For any business owner, keeping your dealership secure is vital. You need to do all you can to protect your records, marketing data, legal documents, and cash as well as your employees. You lock your doors and create security policies, but do you have the same vigilance with your digital […]

Months ago I wrote a blog about appling Agile methodologies to raising my two girls.  My goal was to minimize yelling and screaming and create more order in our lives.  I achieved my goals. Really, you ask?  Yes, no kidding, but  I probably broke every Agile rule in the book and that’s coming from someone […]

Business owners who engage in online sales want the option of testing out different versions of a web page to see which one has a higher conversion rate. Most auto dealers have heard of, or currently utilize, “split” A/B testing. In split A/B testing, traffic is evenly divided between two variations of the same web […]

The 80/20 rule, a concept credited to the 19th century economist Vilfredo Pareto, argues that 80 percent of the land and wealth in a population is held by 20 percent of the people. Joseph M. Juran, an American management consultant and engineer, applied this rule to quality management, stating that 80 percent of the issues in […]

On any given day, families around the world wake up, feed their kids, get them to school, work, come home, eat, clean, and go to bed.  There are daily tasks like brushing teeth, weekly tasks such as buying groceries, and long-term tasks or projects such as painting the house. The success in managing these family […]

One of the major challenges of developing software concerns striking the right balance between features and usability — the degree to which a product helps end users to utilize offered functions easily and appropriately. Most software companies include more and more features in their products in an attempt to distinguish their applications from those of […]

As the grey hairs have collected, I have heard a range of arguments over the years about how many testers are enough for user testing, (or even alpha and beta testing).  Some argue that you should have large samples for statistical certainty, while others argue much less.  I am a much less kinda guy?

In Part 1 of User Design Makes Sense I compared usability design as it relates to software and automotive dashboards. My point was to show that usability design is critical regardless of what tool you are creating. Today I want to dig a little deeper and first discuss what is good design and then outline […]