best practices

{width=“280” height=“291”} By Dave Snowden : The name serves as a reminder that all human interactions are strongly influenced and frequently determined by our experiences, both through the direct influence of personal experience, as well as through collective experience (…) The framework provides a typology of contexts that guides what sort of explanations or solutions might apply. (…) Obvious [Simple] Tightly constrained No degrees of freedom sense-categorise-respond → Best Practice Complicated...

7 Rules for Creating Gorgeous UI The Rules: Light comes from the sky Black and white first Double your whitespace Learn the methods of overlaying text on images (see Part 2 ) Make text pop— and un-pop (see Part 2 ) Only use good fonts (see Part 2 ) Steal like an artist (see Part 2 )

Agile Is Dead (Long Live Agility) – PragDave Back to the Basics Here is how to do something in an agile fashion. What to do: Find out where you are Take a small step towards your goal Adjust your understanding based on what you learned Repeat How to do it: When faced with two or more alternatives that deliver roughly the same value, take the path that makes future change easier....

#GamerGate [Online] Survival Guide | Jon Jones, smArtist Here is a quick, streamlined guide on how to keep yourself safe online and make harassing you and tracking you down much more difficult. Two-factor authentication on everything. Password manager for unique, difficult passwords. Install PrivacyFix. Lock down old Facebook posts and adjust your privacy settings. Domain name whois guard. Delete old accounts. Check the internet for your personal information. Use a VPN....

Not all technical debt is born the same, because A Mess is not a Technical Debt . (via TechnicalDebtQuadrant )

for each desired change, make the change easy (warning: this may be hard), then make the easy change. Kent Beck

The philosophy of great customer service | Derek Sivers (Actually, I prefer the term “client care”, since “client” implies a relationship, instead of “customer”, which is transactional. But I’ll use the normal term instead of confusing things by using mine.) You can afford to be generous The customer is more important than the company Customer service is a profit center Every interaction is your moment to shine Lose every fight Rebelliously right the wrongs of the world

10 Surprising Pricing Strategies That Can Boost Sales Similarity can cost you sales Utilize price anchoring The secrets of Weber’s Law Reduce pain points in the sales process Reframe the product’s value Bundle commonly bought items Sweat the small stuff Appeal to utility or pleasure It’s either free or it isn’t Try out an old classic: ending prices with the number 9 Emphasize time spent vs. saved Never compare prices without a reason Utilize the power of context Test different levels of pricing Keep prices stupidly simple

There is, however, old wisdom — perhaps from an earlier version of the Mac HIG — that says how to create error messages: they should be of the form “Can’t x because of y.” They may optionally include additional detail and/or recovery steps. “Can’t x because of y. Something is true. Try a thing.” A similar form is this: “Noun can’t x because y.” (As in “‘Downloaded.app’ can’t be opened because it is from an unidentified developer....

The Ultimate Guide to Solving iOS Battery Drain — Overthought How to Test Your iOS Battery Drain Head on over to Settings > General > Usage and check out your times. The key to look for is that your Usage time should be significantly lower than your Standby time (…) So here’s the test: write down your usage and standby time, press the sleep/wake button (…) to put the device to sleep, and set the device down for five minutes....