Pixels and Widgets

A blog by Tai Toh

Tag: ux

  • My thoughts on moving from UX to Product Management

    —

    by

    ttoh
    in

    So I stopped practicing UX at Kobo. Haven’t touched the stuff in over 9-months. I don’t even have Omnigraffle or any Adobe products installed. I don’t even know if I could graffle my way out of a wireframe. A bit of background Back around February, Kobo made some changes in the Product and Design were…

  • The shift to delighting the customer

    —

    by

    ttoh
    in

    In “The Dumbest Idea in the World: Maximizing Shareholder Value,” Steve Denning writes about Roger Martin’s new book “Fixing the Game“: “We must shift the focus of companies back to the customer and away from shareholder value,” says Martin. “The shift necessitates a fundamental change in our prevailing theory of the firm… The current theory…

  • Pretty historic 2 weeks for me

    —

    by

    ttoh
    in

    A year ago, if you asked me what I was doing, I would have said, “No biggie, just designing an eReader application for the iPhone.” Since then, I’ve worked on the mobile architecture for the iPhone, BlackBerry, Pre and Android. The past two weeks saw Kobo announcing their new eReader device for our retail partners,…

  • Crazy: Microsoft is getting their mojo back

    —

    by

    ttoh
    in

    The phone operating system does away with pretty much every scrap of previous mobile efforts from Microsoft, from the look and feel down to the underlying code — everything is brand new. 7 Series has rebuilt Windows Mobile from the ground up, featuring a completely altered home screen and user interface experience, robust Xbox LIVE…

  • Itching for a redesign

    —

    by

    ttoh
    in

    It’s been just over a year since I rolled out the current design of Pixels and Widgets and for the past four weeks, I’ve been itching to tear it down and start all over again. I guess the question that occurs to me is: Why redesign a site that you barely update? I’ve been asking…

  • Quote: It’s all about quality…

    —

    by

    ttoh
    in

    While such attention to detail may not be appreciated in the specific case, however, I’ve found that in aggregate it leads to an overall impression of quality that attracts the kind of fanatically devoted users who form the backbone of a growing, long term user base. Shipping quality is a longer, tougher road than just…

  • Thoughts on Android

    —

    by

    ttoh
    in

    I had a chance to trial a Vodafone HTC Magic (from the UK) this weekend. It’s uses the Google-experience flavour of Android and as such I was not able to connect it to my client’s corporate email account. Total bummer. If I were to purchase a Rogers Wireless version, I’d get the ability to use…

  • Why am I loyal to Nokia and Symbian?

    —

    by

    ttoh
    in

    Working with my current client and developing mobile applications for every mobile platform under the sun has made me more aware of the user experiences for each device. In the past, I have dabbled using Windows Mobile, but for the past 5 years have stuck with Symbian powered phones from Nokia (with a brief 5…

  • iPhone (iFun) for a Weekend

    —

    by

    ttoh
    in

    I had a chance to take the iPhone from work and use it over the past weekend and I felt that I should write about it. The process was very simple: Just switch SIM cards and sync my contacts, email settings using iTunes. It was so seamless. Pretty jaw dropping if you have a Mac…