Category Archives: Software Development

Good Notes 5 – Surprised by Joy Some More

Posted on October 17, 2020 by Skip Walter

Day 218 of Self Quarantine  Covid 19 Deaths in U.S.:  219,000   VOTE!! Certain to Win: The Strategy of John Boyd Applied to Business by Chet Richards is one of the books that Professor David Socha and I are referencing for our … Continue reading →

Posted in Content with Context, Design, Know Now, Learning, Lifelet, Software Development, User Experience | Leave a comment

Good Notes 5 – Surprised by Joy

Posted on October 11, 2020 by Skip Walter

Day 212 of Self Quarantine  Covid 19 Deaths in U.S.:  214,000   VOTE!! As Professor David Socha and I were collaborating on a paper about “Observe, Don’t Ask” and its role in the software product development life cycle, he pulled out his … Continue reading →

Posted in Content with Context, Design, Know Now, Learning, Lifelet, Software Development, Uncategorized, User Experience | 3 Comments

A Product has a North Star

Posted on May 7, 2020 by Skip Walter

Recently, I came across a blog post on “North Star Metric” (NSM).  I was delighted that somebody else had written about a topic that is critical to the product teams I’ve managed.  I shared my thoughts in the post “The … Continue reading →

Posted in Attenex Patterns, Content with Context, Design, Product, Reflecting, Software Development, User Experience | 1 Comment

Programming a Computer makes me Happy

Posted on April 20, 2020 by Skip Walter

Translating an idea from my head into an inanimate extremely logical computer AND seeing the idea come to life makes me happy. Even after 50 years of creating software and software products I am always “surprised by the joy” of … Continue reading →

Posted in Patterns, Reflecting, Software Development | 1 Comment

A Product Produces Outcomes

Posted on April 2, 2020 by Skip Walter

What is an outcome? “So let’s start by defining the word in our context: an outcome is a change in human behavior that drives business results. Outcomes have nothing to do with making stuff—though they sometimes are created by making … Continue reading →

Posted in Idealized Design, Outcome, Product, Software Development, Transactive Content | Leave a comment

End of my Amazon Fire Phone Experiment

Posted on December 31, 2014 by Skip Walter

What was I thinking? It’s the apps stupid!! I finally ended my experiment with the Amazon Fire Phone this week.  It took several months to get an iPhone 6+ with the high demand, but I traded in my Amazon Fire … Continue reading →

Posted in Content with Context, Design, Flipped Perspective, Software Development | 1 Comment

Storyscaping

Posted on May 27, 2014 by Skip Walter

My colleague, David Robinson, works tirelessly to get me to tell stories. It’s not that I don’t want to. I spent forty years being a terminal analytic, just the facts, kind of presenter. I forget to step back and compose … Continue reading →

Posted in Content with Context, Curation, Design, Human Centered Design, Innovation, Learning, organizing, Software Development, Transactive Content, User Experience | Leave a comment

Epistemology of Software?

Posted on October 19, 2013 by Skip Walter

While in the middle of a UW HCDE committee review of Drew Paine‘s dissertation research proposal, I was fascinated by the first sentence of his project goal: “The driving philosophical goal of my dissertation is to critically examine the epistemology … Continue reading →

Posted in Content with Context, Human Centered Design, Software Development | 2 Comments

Daydreaming of Kindle Social Highlights

Posted on September 11, 2013 by Skip Walter

One of the joys of riding the ferry between Seattle and Bainbridge Island is bumping into the eclectic collection of friends and colleagues somewhat randomly. The other night I had the pleasure of sitting next to John Lange from Amazon. … Continue reading →

Posted in Amazon Kindle, Big Data, Content with Context, Curation, Learning, Software Development | 1 Comment

Advice to a wannabe entrepreneur

Posted on September 9, 2013 by Skip Walter

More times than I can count (or even want to remember) some aspiring entrepreneur contacts me to ask for advice on how to start a business and bring their idea to market. The QBQ (question behind their question) is often … Continue reading →

Posted in Design, Entrepreneuring, Flipped Perspective, Human Centered Design, Software Development, Value Capture | 1 Comment