John Whalen's ideas on User Experience, Social Media, and Persuasive Design from Washington, DC

the root causes for sub-optimal user experience have to do with lack of appropriate process, and governance, and lack of a genuine commitment to a quality user experience. Such a commitment would lead organizations to adopt a user-centered usability-oriented development process. Rather than taking these steps, we see a lot of projects that are “stakeholder [...]

Why? Because socializing doesn’t scale. Once a group reaches a certain size, each participant starts to feel anonymous again, and the person they’re following — who once seemed proximal, like a friend — now seems larger than life and remote. “They feel they can’t possibly be the person who’s going to make the useful contribution,” [...]

Designing a rich Internet application (RIA) can test even an experienced design team. The hardest challenge is to blend Web and desktop paradigms to create a responsive and intuitive experience. Some paradigms that exist in the desktop environment are ill-suited for the Web, while many of the Web paradigms people are familiar with (paging, explicit [...]

There are plenty of good places to go sledding on a wintery day in Washington DC, Maryland and Northern Virginia. Here are some popular sledding hills around the DC area.
via dc.about.com
There’s still time…

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