Let’s talk for a moment about why I misfiled my tax extension. Melty Jello brain aside, bad software design almost cost my little family $2,500. Background: When I’m not wrestling a one-year-old into tiny shoes, I’m a User Experience Designer. This means I work with software companies to create easy-to-understand…

A lovely fellow from The Austin Chronicle wrote to my fellow South by Southwest panelists asking for a definition of our enigmatically titled presentation. He wanted to know what a “Funologist” was, and rather than sadden him with the news that our moderator made it up, we all took a…

Happy news! I was invited to be a panelist at the South by Southwest Interactive conference next month, as part of their ScreenBurn track. I’m on a panel called “Funologists live and in person: Guerilla Game Research.” I’ll share my experience starting some low-budget user research cycles for Second Life,…

Movie ratings suck. “Rated R” doesn’t tell me anything I need to know. I need to know if a movie contains cannibalism, synthesizers, or Jim Carrey. I need a rating system that reflects the diversity of obstacles lurking in today’s cinema. Introducing… The Librarian Avengers Film Rating System Rated A…

I’m typing with my face today due to a stupidity-induced thumb injury from, I think, painting my basement. Homeowners beware. In the meantime, just to show that I’m not all thorns and lemons, here are some good websites. Good in that attainable way. You will notice that these are mostly…

Thanks for all of the kind comments on the previous post. They really helped balance the freaking out I had to do when a kind well-meaning soul posted this link as an example of a REALLY GOOD children’s website. Ok. Let’s go through this again. Slowly. This time I’m going…

I got this in my email today: What children can teach us: Lessons learned from the trenches of digital libraries “…developing digital libraries that support young people in querying, browsing, and reading scanned materials.” It all sounds very impressive until you click the link. Look at that thing! It’s like…