I was 17 when I announced to my orthodontist I wanted to be an industrial engineer. I was so sure about this. The weeks before, I had spent time scouring Encyclopaedia Britannica (yes, those were the days before Wikipedia) finding out what industrial engineers do and was hooked.
So, today, when I came across this article in the Wall Street Journal about Starbucks’s ‘Lean’ Japanese Techniques, my long forgotten dream bubbled back up to consciousness. I traded the assembly line for computer applications, but the passion remained, albeit, driven by another media.
14 days and counting – Firefox 3 has managed to surprise me on more than a few levels. When I first downloaded it, I assumed it was just going to be another of those updates you can hardly notice the changes that has taken place. Now, this is not a personal affront to those who work on making this enigmatic browser more secure than ever, but then as an interaction designer, I usually am more into how the browser works with users.
One of the biggest problems with softwares these days is the number of steps we need to perform to accomplish a simple task. More often than not, once we get used to doing the same thing over and over again, we arrive at the conclusion that the steps are unavoidable and plowing through them good naturedly might just make them seem more acceptable.