Principles of User Interface Design

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I just read an excellent declaration of the principals of UX, "Principles of User Interface Design"

Clarity is the first and most important job of any interface. To be effective using an interface you've designed, people must be able to recognize what it is, care about why they would use it, understand what the interface is helping them interact with, predict what will happen when they use it, and then successfully interact with it. While there is room for mystery and delayed gratification in interfaces, there is no room for confusion. Clarity inspires confidence and leads to further use. One hundred clear screens is preferable to a single cluttered one.

It's a good use of ten minutes.

So I started keeping a journal based on the "pick four things" principal of achieving goals.

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So I started keeping a journal based on the "pick four things" principal of achieving goals.

Essentially you pick your goals and every day you write about what you have achieved or how you worked towards a successful outcome of those goals.

My goals are:

  1. Be More Focussed
  2. Reach a healthy weight of 95KG.
  3. Pay off the mortgage

I have reasons for each of these goals (which are incidentally stored in Evernote) that detail why I want to achieve them. I review that note every week.

I’ll be writing the journal every day, for 12 weeks. I don’t expect to attain the goals in 12 weeks, some of them, particularly the mortgage, are very long term (5-10 years). However - this is about getting me into the habit of working on those goals, rather than them being far distant, nice to have, nebulous “things”.

I'm using Day One software for the journal itself, written in Markdown syntax. I’ve rigged Day One to remind me once a day to write the post and the journal is accessible from all my devices.

For extra lazy points I’ve written a Text Expander snippet which you can download which asks me three questions, one about each goal.

My GTD / Omnifocus Weekly Review Checklist

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There are many. This is mine.

I use Omnifocus to track my tasks so some terms may not apply to you. My weekly reminder to do my weekly review, links directly to this post and I keep it visible whilst I review all the items in my bucket.

Is it done?

I don't tick off everything as I do it and nor does anyone else. Have a quick check to see if you’ve completed the project since the last review, or if anyone else has.

Should it be be on hold?

Will you make any actions on this project before it’s next review date? If not, put it on hold. This enables you to better focus on tasks you actually can do - your available task perspectives won’t be filled with tasks you can’t do right now.

Do you still care / Is the outcome still needed?

It’s probably been a week since you last did a review, depending on the frequency of review you’ve set for this project - possibly much more. Have your priorities changed? Is this project important any more? No?

Kill it. There are enough genuinely important tasks for you to attend to without adding more. Lose the guilt. drop the task.

If you're reviewing single tasks - should it really be a project?

I have many stacks of single tasks, piles of repeating tasks, lists of articles to read etc. Often, tasks creep in that really should be projects. Remember, a project is anything that takes more than 1 clearly defined step to complete. Breaking tasks down into the smallest practical step is key to actually getting things done.

Is the project described as an outcome?

I find that longer, more descriptive project titles such as “Go on a geeky holiday with your friends in 2013” is a lot easier to use than “Holiday?”. Is your task written as an actual outcome?

“describe in a single sentence the intended successful outcome for the problem or situation” It can help to think of this as writing for someone else - the you of next week really is a different person from the you of today.

If the project is significant, have you leveraged positive affirmation techniques to help it succeed?

I’ve writing a much longer post about this, suffice for now to say that projects of note have two questions asked and answered in the notes field:

  1. Why do I want to achieve the outcome for this project?
  2. What does the project outcome look like?

Is there a clearly defined next action?

Your project will not move on until you have identified (at least) the next specific task which will move you closer to completion.

Is this project stuck?

Reviewed this project more than once without it moving forward? You’re stuck. You might need to change your next action, maybe the existing next action should be split into two, or the order of the project changed.

Are you reviewing this project frequently enough? Or too often?

Review as infrequently as you can (to reduce admin overheads) but as frequently as you need to (to ensure things don’t slip entirely or slip back into your head space). Omnifocus defaults to a week, which is a good start but probably isn’t suitable for half or more of your projects. For example, The holiday you’re planning to take in 12 months, from here it’s probably a 3 month review, closer it becomes monthly, within 4 weeks it should probably become weekly. Changing the review frequency of a project is entirely appropriate and should be done as your relationship with the project and the projects relationship with time changes. Appropriate review frequency is a real example of ‘Mind like water’.

What do you think? Any feedback? This is a ‘live’ document that my weekly review reminder links to directly so any improvements or refinements are added into the process constantly. I owe a debt to the writers of this post which is the article I used for reviews prior to writing this.

How to clean up all the apps in iTunes that you no longer have installed on your iPhone or iPad.

This has annoyed me for a while now - I have maybe a hundred apps installed on my iPhone and on my iPad. Some of those apps are installed on both. Some have different versions on both. Some apps that appear in my iTunes aren't installed on either. Short of going throughout all the installed apps by hand - how can you tell which apps are in iTunes, but not installed so I can save

  • Space
  • Time & bandwidth downloading updates
  • Mind space

Easily, it turns out.

  1. Have a good look at each app installed on your device. If you haven't used it in the last month, delete it.
  2. Sync and back up all the devices you have.
  3. Open iTunes, go to apps, hit Ctrl-A to select all apps, right click, delete, yes send to trash.
  4. Right click each device under 'Devices' & select sync
  5. When prompted say "Yes, I would like to transfer purchases over to my Mac".
  6. Wait until the sync has completed and repeat for each device.
  7. Enjoy a shiny clean apps folder in iTunes that has all the apps in it you need and not one more.

Any apps you have downloaded, free or otherwise are available to re download from iTunes at no cost.