Humberto's Thoughts

I'm in my 15 minutes break from planning. Designing new features is a lot of fun but is pretty damn hard. You may think, well, why don't just do what customers asked you to do the last version the exact way they asked you to do it? A: We would never do anything innovative; besides, what one customer wants is what another customer hates. True, your main focus while designing features is to satisfy a customer need, but the way you satisfy that need is equally important; you can do what everybody else is doing or you can open the doors to something that customers didn't even think of before. Simple, powerful and intuitive...that is the way a feature should be. Example? Google, Excel's Autofilter, Vista's search menu.

Today, I found my twin soul.... my brother. I didn't realize before we had so much in common which is shocking in a way...in a good way I guess; now I know.

Do you have any examples of sites using the latest, coolest Ajax (Web 2.0) controls/techniques? Post them here! How do you identify a Web 2.0 site? Well, basically such sites seem to load all the information they display "on the fly" without the need to load another page. Take for example a site like http://www.kayak.com; when you start by inputting a “From” city it will autosuggest you as soon as it identifies relevant matches. Once you hit “search” it will progressively populate the results table which you can filter out right there… pretty much like if you were using a traditional desktop application. Netflix.com is another great example of Ajax enabled site. Whenever you add a movie to you queue, an inline dialog appears suggesting you similar movies. Got any cool examples?

I've just finished the book "UI design for programmers" by Joel Spolsky which my manager recommended me. Other than bad jokes, the book is actually pretty good. It is full of "obvious" facts that nonetheless aren't so obvious until you actually read them; all in all, a recommendable book. Book aside, Joel is one of those guys that hates to love Microsoft… he worked at MS, still has many friends on the company and yet he regularly insist on attacking the company/products in his blog posts; sometimes with a good reason behind, sometimes out of absolute nonsense. Maybe I’m a bit like him… After going to my first company meeting (a whole stadium full of Microsofties, imagine that!) I realized why I feel the way I do regarding Microsoft... it is hard for a company of this size to get things right in all areas... some product teams are a disaster, others are marvelous; which inevitable leads you to love and hate the company. At the end of the day, I feel me happy

Impressive: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2VusJwGTQQ

Am I in the right place? Should I go back? Does it worth the effort? Y me pregunto, que hago aqui :/