Be Uncomfortable

28 May

The strongest work of my career to date came about on a product released before it was finished. Features were incomplete, others un-styled, many missing altogether.

Why ship it early? Motivation.

Nothing is more motivating than thousands of people using your incomplete product. Bugs are fixed immediately. Designs that exist in Photoshop are live in two days, and their weaknesses will be pointed out immediately. Un-styled placeholder markup built by an engineer forces a designer to stop dragging his feet and design a real solution.

Be Opinionated

Develop an opinion on which features are the most important. Add additional features only if they don’t disrupt that vision.

May 27, ‘10

Incremental Destruction

Rather than incrementally adding features that de-focus your product, re-design it from scratch.

May 26, ‘10

Just Create

Everyone has a fear of putting work out there. Listen to that fear and you’ll be mediocre. Ignore it and you’ll create greatness.

May 25, ‘10

Designing the First 15 Minutes

Post-mortem of a talk I gave at South by Southwest Interactive this year.

Mar 18, ‘10

Think Locally

Don’t waste time thinking about problems that you can’t act on. Focus on what’s proximate to you.

Mar 2, ‘10

R3-Launch

Introducing the third release of RobGoodlatte.com — the result of simplifying and focusing successful elements of the previous design.

Feb 24, ‘10